Seattle City Council Select Budget Committee Public Hearing 10/3/19

Good evening, everyone.

Good evening and thank you for coming to our budget hearing tonight.

It's October 3rd.

This is the first of two budget meetings that we have.

Thank you.

Glad the mics are on now.

Thank you.

Council President Harrell is with me as Council Member Swatt, Council Member Juarez, Council Member Mesquite is down here, and I believe I saw Council Member Herbold here somewhere.

But thank you again for coming.

So tonight we're going to hear from each of you.

You will have two minutes each to speak, unless you're with a group, and then you've got up to five minutes.

Nobody has to take all the time, just want you to know.

In some days we've given awards for the shortest speech at the end of the evening.

The shortest but the pithiest.

So that's what you're aiming for.

The next public hearing is going to be October 22nd here in Council Chambers at 5.30, so you'll have a second opportunity to talk to us if you would like.

We began this past week the council's review of the mayor's budget.

We spent Wednesday, Thursday, Friday last week and then all day yesterday where we looked at LEED and the TNC proposal and tonight you are open to talk about anything that is of interest to you.

So, all of you know that for the next month, after tonight's hearing, and then after our second public hearing, we will be entertaining different ideas, some of the community response, some of your best thinking, to incorporate in what will become the council's recommended budget.

Any way we cut it, we have to have a balanced budget.

So, you know, if somebody steps up and says, we need $700 million more for something great, Unless you've got a new revenue source for us that's handy, probably it's not going to end up in this year's budget.

I'm going to be presenting what will be the first crack of the council's budget proposal on November 6th.

So that'll be after we've gotten an opportunity to hear from the community twice.

I think we're just going to dive in.

Tonight I've got a number of people who have signed up and There are about 14 people who were here with us last night, and they were here talking primarily about the TNC contract.

Too many people had to leave to go to other events last night, so we promised them that they would get an opportunity to come forward tonight.

So I'm going to read off various numbers here, and then I'm going to get to a point where I'm going to be calling on people.

I'm going to ask you to hold up your numbers when you come up.

Put the numbers over there in the comment cards.

I'll be calling three names.

And we'll try to keep things moving that way.

So if you hear your name, I'm going to ask you to come to the microphone, queue up, and then everybody will get two minutes and we'll be done before midnight.

So thank you for that.

Okay.

Katie Garrow, and I think Keiko is going to be here, and you may have someone else.

Ah, the three of you are over here.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Yeah, Council Member, would you permit us to speak as a group on behalf of the Fair Share Coalition?

Absolutely.

You have up to five minutes, Katie.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Council Members, for having us here tonight.

My name is Katie Garrow.

I'm the Deputy Director at MLK Labour, an organization dedicated to building power for workers.

We at MLK Labor are one of the 50 community labor, transportation, and housing organizations who make up the Fair Share Coalition, supporting the Mayor's Fair Share Plan.

In 2011, Uber and Lyft entered the market in a flurry.

Seattleites embraced this efficient and simple new tool to get around.

But taxi drivers who previously made a living wage slowly slipped into poverty, unable to compete with TNC companies who were not subject to the same licensing, fees, and regulations they were.

2015, enter Council Member Mike O'Brien.

The Seattle City Council legislated the first ever collective bargaining rights for drivers with a vision to raise standards for drivers and give them a voice on the job.

2019, an ambitious and pragmatic mayor, Jenny Durkin decides enough is enough and announces her fair share plan.

It is a modest 51 cent per ride tax that attempts to bring dignity to a mostly immigrant and refugee workforce who are the furthest from economic opportunity in this country and create new housing and transportation infrastructure that we so desperately need.

Thank you to Council Member Mike O'Brien for your pioneering.

Thank you to Council Member Harrell for your continued leadership on this body of work.

Thank you to Council Member Mosqueda for always having our back.

Thank you mostly to Teamsters Local 117 and the app-based Drivers Association for never abandoning drivers.

You are a beacon in the labor movement and you have proven to workers everywhere that no law or judge will define the fate of people who work for a living.

And now I'd like to introduce a leader in the App-Based Drivers Association and Teamsters Local 117 to Kelly Gobena.

Good evening.

My name is Takele Gobana.

I'm a union representative with the Teamster 117. We are a union of over 17,000 working people across Washington State.

Tonight, we are excited to join the Fair Share Coalition and partner with growing number of labor and community organization to build more equitable and sustainable Seattle for all.

Our goal is to make sure that Seattle grows work for everyone, including our city's 30,000 Uber and Lyft drivers.

As a former Uber driver myself, I know the important role Uber and Uber drivers and Lyft drivers play in Seattle's transportation infrastructure and service for these cities.

Yet drivers have seen their financial struggle getting worse from time to time.

Many of our drivers are people of color, refugees, immigrants, whom driving is their only source of income.

their lack of minimum wage protection, access to benefits, and bear all the costs associated with their work.

Tonight, we urge the council to adopt our coalition fair share policy.

Number one, to ensure that drivers in a living wage are compensated for their experience.

Number two, to establish a process to address unfair deactivation or wrongful termination.

Number three, to invest in driver support service, a critical housing and transportation improvement so that drivers have a greater opportunity to live closer to where they work.

We appreciate council work on the issues over the years.

We look forward working with you to achieve those goals and build more sustainable Seattle for all.

Thank you.

Thanks.

And finally, my name is Kelsey Mesher.

I'm with the Transportation Choices Coalition.

We are proud to be a part of the Fair Share Coalition.

I think everyone in this room knows how important it is that we have reliable and affordable transportation during this time of growth, which is why we are incredibly supportive and excited to see that this legislation will support us fully funding the Center City Connector Streetcar Project, will improve our mobility in downtown, one of our most congested areas.

and provide transportation to more than 20,000 people every single day.

This project has been a long-term goal of the city and has strong support from the public.

In addition to funding the streetcar project, critically, this will fund affordable housing near transit, which will allow transit-oriented communities, working families, access to jobs, schools, and opportunity without the added cost burden of owning a vehicle.

If we are a city that prioritizes health and the well-being of our people and planet, we need to invest in more transportation choices, in more affordable housing, and to protect and lift up our workers.

And the Fair Share Plan helps us do all of these things.

So please stand with us and support this legislation.

Great.

Thank you very much, all three of you.

Appreciate your speaking.

Mohamed Mohamed, then Walter Ellis, then Dawn Creary.

Can you raise your hands if you're here so we can see?

Again, Mohamed Mohamed, Walter Ellis, Don Querrey.

Okay, those were some from last night.

Judge Chess, would you like to speak?

Good evening, council members.

I'm Judge Faye Chess with Seattle Municipal Court.

Thank you for giving me an opportunity to speak a few minutes.

My colleague, Judge Chen, as well as my colleague, Betty McNeely, were here to talk about the Seattle Municipal Court Probation Department.

We came last year to talk to you and ask that you preserve our money for probation and we talked about the need to have resources when we have individuals in front of us and we are looking at options other than placing them in jail.

I'm not going to repeat what I said last year but what I'd like council to know and I'm going to talk about it in data because sometimes the numbers speak louder than anything else you can say.

72 committed high community safety related, not diversion eligible crimes.

That's our numbers.

77 successfully completed their obligations.

And when I say 77%, that means we had 77% of the individuals who went through our system who actually successfully completed their obligations.

There is a misnomer that people believe that that people are punished for not successfully completing probation.

They sit in jail.

That's not true.

Our numbers show otherwise.

1,600 individuals are in probation.

That's an average daily population.

35 average daily post-sentence jail population for SMC cases.

86% complete probation without returning to jail.

One-third exit early from successful completion obligations.

I know there has been a lot of talk about some programs.

Those programs are pre-trial programs.

Those are pre-filing cases.

Those programs lead, link, vital, and pack.

We cannot put individuals into those programs.

Those are outside of the Seattle Municipal Court jurisdiction.

We are progressive and we've integrated many best practices in our work.

In fact, we go to conferences.

Our probation department spends hours and hours beyond time making sure that we are innovative, that we are doing the best practices.

We do not contribute to mass incarceration.

As you can see, I'm a woman of color.

Trust me, I would not want to see people of a color being incarcerated for periods longer than they should or even going to jail if they don't.

That's why probation assists me to work with individuals who have systemic problems outside of the jail system.

And then finally, I want to point out to counsel is that many of the cases that are in probation have to be in probation because the law requires supervision.

DUIs, DV related cases.

I can't tell you what it must feel like to have an individual who is now on their third or fourth DUI related case in front of me.

And if I had no probation to provide oversight, I think I don't have to say what that could look like.

It would not be good for the community.

I could go on and on, and I'd be happy to provide this information, but what I ask you to think about is that what we are asking as the judges of this community is, we think, please preserve our money for probation.

The programs that have been discussed here previously, they are a part of a continuum.

Sometimes you don't catch a person at the beginning.

Sometimes you don't catch them in the middle.

Sometimes, unfortunately, you may not catch them at the end.

But there should be programs that go throughout the continuum, starting before they're arrested, after they're arrested, when the charges are filed, when sentencing happens.

and we're asking that you allow us to keep the good work we're doing with working with these individuals.

Thank you.

Thank you, Your Honor.

Appreciate you coming.

Lata Ahmed.

Thank you for coming back.

I appreciate it.

And after Lata, oh boy, Tumet Mohamed, and then Bambu Sabis.

Please, go ahead.

Thank you, Seattle City members, City Council members.

I appreciate to be here.

I'm really honored to speak in front of you all.

My name is Lata Ahmed and I am Uber and Lyft driver.

For many years, drivers have been fighting together with the union for fair pay and the right to appeal and fair deactivation and driver voice.

by saying that Uber and Lyft are taking more and more from what passenger pays, while drivers are earning less and less.

We are hopeful it will change.

Now the drivers' issues are back on the agenda at the City Hall.

We urge you to pass the Fair Share Plan and work with the driver community to set a living wage.

We are excited that the New York drivers want the minimum rate and the other important protection.

We need the same protection here.

All drivers, no matter where, in New York, Seattle, or anywhere else.

Drivers deserve fair rate and ride share right on the job.

By mentioning the point of a fair rate and the deactivation due process, one of it, our pay is combination of our per minute rate and per mile rate.

We used to be paid over $2 a mile when Uber started.

Now, after a series of cuts, we are paid between $1.18 a mile and less, $1.06, which is more decreasing.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate your testimony.

We're going to have to ask you to stand down now.

Thank you.

Thank you for coming.

Do we have Tumat Mohamed?

Bambus Sabis?

Iban Saeed?

We're moving through pretty fast here.

Patients.

I saw patients here.

I thought I saw patients here.

Elizabeth James.

And then, and I think Jonathan and Paige spoke last night.

Please, nice to see you.

Thank you for coming, Elizabeth.

Hi, thank you for being here tonight.

I'm Elizabeth James from Speak Out Seattle, and we support LEAD and hope that you will fund it appropriately and adequately.

But we also want to be balanced with that.

And so as Lisa Dues-Gardois tells us, lead is misunderstood by many and unfairly gets blamed for increased crime in our communities.

And while that's true, city and county officials sometimes oversell what lead can really do.

LEAD is not for all offenders and certainly not for all prolific offenders.

LEAD was originally designed for diversion of low-level nonviolent crimes of subsistence, drug sales, or possession and prostitution.

It was never intended for people who commit assaults, violent crimes, or who otherwise pose a threat to the general public.

For those folks that LEED cannot serve due to safety concerns for the greater good, we must fund alternative programs so that we can end the recycling door and create a different way to divert them that will work for them.

Mayor Durkin's recent proposal for a 60 bed shelter and treatment options is an important proposal to fund.

It's intended to address those offenders that fall through the cracks right now and that are cycling in and out and causing some, creating some real safety issues for the general public.

Catch and release isn't working for anyone.

We need programs that include shelter and services to turn lives around.

Seattle Municipal Court also has diversion programs that are demonstrably working.

Yesterday they only had 32 people serving time for jails.

They're not just willy nilly jailing people.

They're trying to work with them and trying to divert them.

Drug court, mental health court, SOS, Speak Out Seattle has members who have gone through those programs and they'd say they've changed their lives.

Thank you very much, Elizabeth.

Appreciate your coming.

It looks like number 15, Cindy Krueger.

Excellent.

Cindy, come on up.

And Jennifer Newmark or Newman.

There is a group, so if your group, Jennifer, and your group can get organized perhaps over here on that side.

And then Caitlin Heinen is number 17.

Nice hats, everybody.

Who's Cindy Kruger?

Nice, okay.

Cindy, do you want to introduce yourself?

Tell us why you're wearing these hats, and welcome to the microphone.

Thank you.

Thank you for the chance to speak with you tonight.

I'd like to recognize my fellow Ballard Peapatch Gnomes, and are there any other gardeners in the audience tonight?

Yay!

Thank you.

My name is Cindy Krueger and I'm speaking on behalf of the Ballard Peapatch tonight.

The Ballard Peapatch gardeners want to thank Mayor Durkan for proposing $3 million in one-time funding from the sweetened beverage tax for the Peapatch program.

These monies will be welcomed in a program that has long been underfunded.

As our city becomes increasingly dense, these oases of green and open space are vital.

Currently, Ballard Peapatch and Immaculate Peapatch are both under imminent threat of sale.

The beverage tax money could further our plan to purchase Ballard Peapatch from the private landowner.

It can also help relocate the Immaculate Peapatch in the Central District.

Because of our urgent need, we also ask the council separately earmark $250,000 for the Ballard Peapatch in the 2020 budget.

This money would help us with our down payment urgently needed in early 2020. Sited on a half acre of land in 1976, the Ballard Peapatch is one of the first in the program.

This land has never been touched by development and it's vital to preserve that.

The land has been leased for 43 years through the generosity of our Redeemer's Lutheran Church.

The church intends to sell the land to fund a renovation project and in partnership with Grow, our fiscal sponsor, we've been given the first chance to purchase it.

The risk of losing this garden is real with the church's construction slated to begin in the spring of 2020. Relocation of a garden this size is not possible.

City funds are a crucial component of the funding strategy to leverage other funds.

In our case, King County's conservation futures tax has been identified as having a strong potential for acquisition.

However, it requires a one-to-one local match.

Since early 2019, we've devoted thousands of hours exploring funding options for the $1.8 million purchase price.

We've held fundraisers and we've raised community awareness.

All the while, we've maintained our garden's connections to the community, donating more than 2,500 pounds of organic, fresh-picked produce to the Ballard Food Bank.

We've hosted an emergency hub workshop, and we mounted our 18th annual Art in the Garden Community Festival.

It's our vision and our intent to further our partnerships with underserved populations.

But to bring that vision to life, we must preserve the garden.

Please consider our urgent need and help us give the NOMA home.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Anybody else from Ballard Group speaking?

Okay.

Well, let's introduce ourselves over here, please.

We're seating our chairs so others can sit.

How nice of you.

Thank you.

Those are good gnomes.

Good evening Council Members.

Thank you for your continued commitment to address the homelessness crisis that we're experiencing.

My name is Jennifer Newman and I'm with Catholic Community Services.

I'm the Program Director for St. Martin de Porres Shelter, one of the oldest shelters here in Seattle.

We provide more than 80,000 bed nights a year for men over the age of 50. Funding has not kept up with the increasing costs of running a shelter and we now are at a deficit of nearly $400,000.

This is not sustainable and we are coming up against a wall at this point.

We have a shelter full of men at an age of retirement.

They have fixed incomes.

There's not nearly enough housing in this city for people on fixed incomes.

And consequently, we are left with men that are making the shelter their home as they wait oftentimes years on housing lists.

Despite the challenges, we're still housing folks.

We've housed 60 men so far this year out of St. Martins.

The other challenge that we have is that because of the age of the men we serve, they're coming with aging-related conditions and developing them in shelter.

Cancer, dementia, COPD.

These men need this shelter and we need funding to continue to provide it.

Many of our men were laborers or tradesmen.

They spent their working lives working in this city.

Despite having a bed night cost of less than $25 per person, we have a nearly $400,000 deficit.

We have talked with the acting HSD director and with the King County Director of Housing and Community Development.

We are now asking you, the council, to provide St. Martin's adequate funding so that we can continue to serve the men, many of whom literally helped build the city of Seattle.

Do you want to speak?

Not really.

Okay.

All right, Alton.

Good evening, council members.

And I want to thank you for all your support throughout this year.

And as Jennifer was saying, I am one of the recipients of the hard work that St. Martin's has put in for men in this area.

I've been gone there for about three years now and I'm living stable.

They do place you in an apartment and they stay with you.

They don't kick you to the curve.

They have caseworkers that come to your home, make sure you're taken care of, make sure you're staying on top of your bills, and there's no dope or alcohol allowed in any of their buildings.

And this is what you get.

And I am a proud person of St. Martin's.

And this is what I do now.

I get to hang out with these fine ladies who put in so much work and speak on their behalf in St. Martin's.

And that is it for me today.

But I want to say one thing before I leave.

Thank you, Councilman Bruce Erd for all the years you have put in in this city.

Me and Bruce grew up together in this city.

And God bless you all and have a nice evening.

Thank you very much.

All right.

Yes, yes, that'd be great.

Thank you so much for coming.

Okay, the next, we've got Caitlin Heinen, Robin Schwartz, and Chief Seattle Club.

Hi.

Good evening.

My name is Caitlin Heinen, and I'm a staff attorney for the Housing Justice Project.

And I'm here this evening to talk about why we need funding for lawyers to represent tenants facing eviction.

Seattle needs more affordable housing, but building these properties takes time.

An effective way to prevent homelessness in our community is to keep people housed where they are already living.

But to do this well, tenants need lawyers.

Our courts are not easy to navigate alone.

The Housing Justice Project is the only in-court program in our area that provides eviction defense, which we've been doing for 20 years.

We are on the front lines of the housing crisis here in the Seattle area, and we see the difference having an attorney makes in these eviction cases.

But as eviction cases rise and our volunteer numbers decline, we are having to turn away more and more clients due to low capacity.

Almost all landlords already have an attorney, so tenants are already at a disadvantage.

These clients who are turned away are often having to go into court representing themselves pro se, and these tenants will most undoubtedly be evicted within a week.

This is the hardest part of my job as a staff attorney.

Having to tell someone in need, having to tell someone in crisis that I can't help them today because there aren't enough lawyers available.

This is why having enough lawyers is crucial in eviction defense.

The newest laws that were passed this year at the state level are intended to protect tenants, but they won't be effective if they aren't enforced by lawyers in the courts.

New York City and San Francisco guarantee a right to counsel in eviction defense.

It's time Seattle follow suit, and providing funding for eviction defense lawyers is a great first step.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Caitlin.

Robin?

Number 18, Robin Schwartz, Chief Seattle Club, is 19. And we have several people speaking about lead and reach, and we don't have names there.

We just have lead on number 20, 21, and 22.

Hi, my name is Robin Schwartz and I'm a parent at Concord International Elementary School.

Thank you for your consideration of funding for a safe ADA compliant access ramp for kids and their families coming to and from school.

Thank you Councilmember Herbold for your support of this project.

This entryway will replace a dangerous footpath which leads into the school's parking lot.

The new path will be well-lit, tree-lined, and will provide a second, safer entryway to school, a pathway for community members to access the playground, one of only two in South Park, and will allow students to easily and safely walk to Mara Farm, a working farm where the children help grow, harvest, and eat healthy food, and enjoy cultural ties to a lifestyle many of them left behind when they immigrated here.

South Park has more children per capita than any other neighborhood in Seattle.

We also have some of the worst air quality in the state and less green space than almost any neighborhood in the city.

73% of Concord's kids qualify for free and reduced lunch, and 87% are children of color.

There are many challenges also that come with living next to a Superfund site, but we know our kids deserve a safe and equitable environment.

Concord families have long recognized the safety issues inherent in this path and have worked hard to effect change.

Our community cannot support fundraising campaigns like other school communities, and this is why we're seeking your help.

Even coming here today is a privilege that most of our families don't have due to language barriers, inflexible jobs, inadequate public transportation, et cetera.

Raising funds is often about who has the loudest voice.

I'm asking you to consider who has the greatest need and which communities have waited longest for equity in action.

A beautiful, safe pathway to school is important to South Park families, and we hope the council shares our goals.

Thank you.

Thank you for coming.

Thanks, Robin.

Robin, we have a nice showing from our Chief Seattle Club.

Congratulations on a great event today.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, all right.

Well, thank you council members for having you want five minutes.

Yes All right, would you thank you?

You've already done.

It's already gone All right.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Well, thank you so much for having us here Um, we want to thank you for the process and we know that this is um a lot of hard work and I just love the community Feel in this room and we support lead we support.

Um st martin's um and and lazarus day center They are incredible and also the streetcar so we'll get that out of the way And my name is Colleen Echo-Hawk.

I'm here as Executive Director of the Chief Seattle Club.

We're here to talk a little bit about the work that we're doing at the Chief Seattle Club, so specifically around our housing work that we've been doing, rapid rehousing.

In the past year and a half, we have impacted Native housing for the city of Seattle in incredible ways.

Uh, we are happy recipients of hsd dollars for our rapid rehousing program However this past year we spent that those dollars was in the first six months because we have been so successful At housing native people it is no secret in the city that despite being a native city We have the highest rates of homelessness And so we are very laser focused and are asking for support for further rapid rehousing dollars for Chief Seattle Club, as well as money for other focus dollars for our Day Center.

I want to turn over the rest of my time to Shiloh and Inez to share a little bit about their stories.

Good evening.

My name is Shiloh Whitehawk.

I am a citizen of Boeing and Hickory Apache.

I lived on the Hickory Apache Reservation in New Mexico.

I'm a proud United States Air Force veteran.

I served 10 years active duty.

I'm a proud father of three wonderful children.

In 2015 I became homeless due to the symptoms of chronic PTSD that I was diagnosed with through the VA.

So I've been going back between Oregon and New Mexico finally decided to settle here in Seattle to be near my kids.

That's when I heard about Chief Seattle Club.

They have a program there.

It is called the Native Works Program and Let's see here.

And it's a trauma-informed, indigenous-designed employment program.

So it helped me get back on my feet.

Let's see here.

The VA helped me with subsidized housing, but I still needed security deposit.

In April, the club provided me with $1,420 of rapid rehousing funds to help me, and they also helped me furnish my apartment.

This has allowed me to focus on my treatment and, of course, my children.

Chief Seattle Club has become a part of my family.

My father taught me how to grass dance, working in Native Works, working on a home bracelet actually brings back memories of that time.

So it's kind of like a big family to me.

I'm one of many testimonies, just one, so if you could just take from my words and There's a lot more of the people out there.

So I thank you for allowing me to share my story.

I'm here today to ask the city council to support the club's request for additional funding for homeless fund.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Inez Gonzalez.

I'm from the Tlahoman Nation.

I'm a former member of Chief Seattle Club and now proud to be lead case manager of the housing team.

I didn't know much of the club until last fall when I attended the Native Vote Party.

I learned about the housing and homelessness services, and at the time myself, I was facing homelessness.

I came into the club, worked with the case manager, and I was able to get the funds I needed to move into a place for me and my son.

After seeing the work that Chief Seattle Club does for the community and experiencing it firsthand, I imagined being part of that.

I got my foot in the door working as hygiene in facilities.

After I started my position, I knew it was exactly where I needed to be.

It was rewarding to help our members, and being a Seattle native myself, when I came into the middle of the city, it felt like home away from home.

Within a few months, I applied for a job as a case manager, and I am now lead case manager.

My very first case in my new position was a 73-year-old Vietnam veteran who was sleeping outside of the VA.

He came in seeking help through our rapid rehousing program.

He was in a walker but strong-willed.

I got him into shelter but he disappeared over the weekend.

By the following Monday, I went into work, and this member informed me that he was diagnosed with a terminal cancer.

We cried together, and he asked me if we could go home to North Dakota.

And because of our diversion program, we were able to get him on a train that night.

He went home to make arrangements to be buried next to his late wife.

This member still calls the club till this day to say hi to staff.

I can personally testify to the impactful, life-changing services that Chief Seattle Club provides to our native community.

Please provide full funding to expand our homelessness services.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, thank you very much, everybody.

Our next three groups, let me just ask you this.

Did you sign up as 2021-22 as lead, reach one, reach two?

Okay, great.

So the three of you are together, perfect.

Before you get started, let me read three more names.

Queen Pearl, Marguerite Richard, Mass Coalition, and Alex Finch.

Thank you.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you.

Please, go ahead.

Hello, council members.

Me and my co-workers are here to speak in support of the LEAD program, and we also wanted to say that we also support Chief Seattle Club very much, and we share some of the same clients, and we're doing a lot of similar work together.

My name is Joanna, and I'm a case manager, and I have been in various capacities and organizations for 10 years.

Currently, I serve 38 clients with the LEAD program, almost twice as many as is ideal.

One thing I learned over this past decade is the detrimental impact that underfunded social services has on those who do the work, the individuals we serve, and the community overall.

High caseloads like mine breed exhaustion, burnout, and result in high turnovers for our organization serving the city's most vulnerable population.

In these conditions, case managers are unable to provide the long-term work that is essential to be effective in fostering individual and community change.

Indeed, it's our relationships with our clients that have proven to be the most important in providing a healing environment.

When case managers and clients become discouraged by fatigue and turnover, it reinforces mistrust and makes it even harder for the next case manager to build relationships with those clients, let alone foster faith in a system that case managers and our clients are tasked to work within.

I have a handful of clients on my caseload who I rarely see, not because they don't want services, but because what they need is more intensive outreach, relationship building to gain trust and momentum after they've been abandoned time and time again.

I frankly just don't have the time to go out and find them and meet them where they're at.

A proven practice in this field that reaches folks with persistent mental illness, high medical needs, and severe cognitive impairments.

And because of that, the folks who are most vulnerable are falling through the cracks and suffering needlessly because we as a city don't appropriately value social workers despite our programs being evidence-based.

Novelist George Eliot said, what do we live for if not to make life less difficult for each other?

I'm asking council to ease the difficulty of this work and expand our reach by funding the LEAD program to scale.

If you take care of your social workers, we can more effectively take care of your vulnerable constituents and help you improve the city for all of us.

Good evening, council members.

Thank you for this opportunity to speak to you.

I know that what you have in front of you is a very difficult decision, and that's not lost on us.

There are a number of good programs here that have already come and spoken, and that's a really difficult decision.

We face difficult decisions every day with our clients.

And I think that it's really difficult to convey the trauma and the hardships that our clients face.

The things that they have to do to survive out on the street is just something that it would take much more than five minutes, probably more than five months to convey here and to you guys.

However, that is our job.

That is what we do.

And the reality is that we continue to get referrals.

We continue to get calls from the police to do this work.

And the demand is still there.

The demand is high.

The reality is that when we're out in the field, we get calls from the police to come and help.

They still think that we are the answer and we still show up.

And we have to show up at our best, and we cannot do that with too high of caseloads.

We can't do that and bring the quality of service that we are required to do to serve the most vulnerable populations.

And I know that you know this, but the reality is we require the funds to support the people that you see out on the street.

You know who we're talking about.

I don't want to dive into dirty, gritty details and create a scenario that is, you don't need to see it.

But at the end of the day, we need these things in order to do the job that you don't want to see.

And we're doing it.

We are doing it.

And we want to keep doing it.

We love doing this job.

I love doing this job.

I want to keep doing this job.

Let me keep doing this job.

Please.

And I'll let my coworker.

Hi, Karen Salienzo from the Breach Program.

I just want to echo what my coworker said, that the work that we do is unique and unprecedented.

The amount of populations that we touch every day, people who are walking on Aurora, constantly on the streets, facing sexual assault, robbery at all points of the day, people who are constantly traumatized, both currently and historically and through their past lives.

The work that we do needs time, and there's not enough of us.

We can't spend the two hours that someone needs to come down when they've just gotten assaulted, because we have 30 other clients to go see.

There's just not enough of us to do this.

So, that's all.

Thank you very much.

We have the next group, which is number 21. Then the Lead Public Defenders Association, then Marguerite Richard.

Hi, my name is Katrina Henry, and I'm a lead case manager.

And what I wanted to talk to you about today is the humans that I serve.

We're all humans, and the people that we serve are humans.

And they've been devalued.

They've been mistreated.

They've been ostracized.

They don't have all of the things that they need to get along every day like you and I.

Even I work every day and not too long ago experienced being homeless, but no one would know that because I come to work every day.

I still have the same face.

I'm still serving the same people.

I'm doing everything that I need to do.

They don't have that ability to do that every day like me and keep going and never give up and help someone else because they have high medical needs.

They don't have good funding.

They don't have income.

know where to lay your head, all the stresses and traumas, and then we have to think about the childhood trauma that grows and keeps going because it's never been treated, it's never been identified, it's never been...

taken care of in a manner that maybe you or I can make sure that this is treated and that's treated and this is taken care of.

We have the connections that they don't have.

They need me to help them.

They need my coworkers to help them.

The staff that I work with, we all put ourselves on the line all the time.

We're working with people that we don't know.

They have health conditions that can be contracted.

They have medical conditions that are untreated.

I have a client that I've been working with the whole time I've been at REACH, and he's been sick the whole time.

I'm not a caregiver, I'm his case manager, but who would know that by all of the things that I'm having to do?

We all carry that burden.

The people that we see outside, they're still valuable, they're still worth something, they still are somebody's family, they're still someone's loved one.

and not forget them.

Just because you're outside and you're homeless does not mean you're not important.

You're without a home.

Just because you're sick and you're on drugs, that's a sickness.

It's an addiction.

Everyone in this room is addicted to something, whether it be shopping, shoes, clothes, food, sugar.

We're all addicted to something.

They didn't lose their value because they're addicted to something.

They got left at the wayside and nobody was there to catch them before they fell too deep.

Drugs are an addiction, but how did they get here?

Let's look at the bigger problems.

It's not the addicts that are a problem.

It's not the people that are selling drugs.

It's the people that are bringing the drugs here that are making them available to all the other people that are passing that sickness along.

I mean, it's just, it's a cycle.

And we have to be able to help.

We have to be able to take care and do whatever we can.

We can't fix the problem overnight.

Everybody expects LEAD and REACH as an agency to step up to the plate.

And because we've stepped up to the plate, we're supposed to magically make everything disappear and make it better.

It doesn't happen like that.

Because the clients that I'm serving, I have to build a rapport with them first.

Then they have to trust me.

They're in an environment every day where they can't trust the people that they're with.

They can't trust their neighbor because they might want their shoes.

They don't have the shoes that they have.

If I'm without and I don't have and you have, what does that make me?

That makes me a have not.

So I want what the haves have.

And so if that means that I have to take from you to get it, then that's what I'm going to do.

That's a sickness.

But if I don't have it and I don't have any adequacy to be able to do what I need to do, then that's the sickness.

This is not just a job for me.

This is my life.

This is my compassion.

I used to be one of those people outside selling drugs.

I was that person.

So everything I do for the people that I serve every day, I'm giving back to them.

Everything that I have for everything I did wrong, everything that I took from them that somebody took from me and gave me that wasn't right.

Nobody told me it wasn't right.

Nobody showed me that it wasn't right.

But they showed me what I could do.

It'll be okay.

It's not right.

They don't need a pat on the back.

They don't need you to move away from them.

They don't need you to not look their way.

They need us to look their way.

They need us to help them.

They need us to love on them.

They need somebody to value them like we do.

And if we don't have the funding to take care of the people that we need to serve so that we can take care of ourselves and be a better humanity, a better society, then we'll continue this cycle and no one will get better.

Well done.

Okay, after Marguerite is past coalition.

I'm sorry, they're next.

Then you.

Then Marguerite.

First, first, first lead.

I apologize.

Thanks, Council Member O'Brien.

Hi, my name is Kimberly Harrell and I work with REACH.

I'm a case manager with LEAD.

I would first like to speak to you all about the importance of case management for a vulnerable population that I have the pleasure of serving.

For me and the clients I serve, I am the voice for them.

I am the voice for them when it comes to dealing with his or her substance abuse.

I am the voice for my vulnerable clients when dealing with medical and mental health providers.

I am the voice for my vulnerable clients in a courtroom that sometimes can't hear, see, or imagine the significant trauma they have been through and still go through.

I am the voice when it comes to generational poverty my clients have lived, struggled, and came accustomed to.

For some generations, for others, five years are counting.

I am also the voice for all 27 extremely vulnerable clients on my caseload today.

Now, along with being that voice, a major key role is hearing, having a hearing ear, having an ear for most of the horrific, challenging, heartbreaking, gut-wrenching stories.

Some people say and think those who are homeless have a choice to either be homeless or have a home.

They might say, oh, it's your fault.

You made the choice to use heroin, crack, or meth.

Now, now comes the time for you all to hear a client's truth.

If I told you that the age, if I told you at the age of a 12, sorry, if I told you at the age of 12, my client's mother was the needle in his vein.

She was the hands that taught my client how to touch, feel, and look for her veins when it came to her needing quiet time.

Two years later, my client's mom became the tragedy for his life.

My client's mom became the needle for her son's life by injecting him with heroin.

My first thought by hearing this story was complete rage, but the more I listened, I learned that my client's mom had a truth as well.

My client's grandmother introduced her daughter to alcohol at a young age to make it easier for her to be a sexual partner for her own father.

Generational poverty and substance use is a story I'm asking you to please hear.

My client was 17 when his mother committed suicide.

Why is the need for more case management important?

Like I said, I have a caseload of 27 clients that I show up for every day wanting to be a voice and ears and fully present for all of them at any given time.

I practice self-care, but it can become challenging when you deal with such vulnerable men and women that not only need your time or basic needs or support, resources, housing, medical help, mental health, visits in jail, are being picked up off the freeway because they were sexually assaulted and thrown out of the car and you were the first person that they called.

Along with being the first person that was called, I was dealing with two other clients the same day with other needs.

Not to say the night before I spent the night at Swedish because one of my clients had a baby and I was the only one in the delivering room to support her besides the doctors and nurses.

My client that was sexually assaulted and thrown out of a car that I picked up on a freeway needed three hours of encouragement to go to the hospital, have a rape kit performed, and it took another four and a half hours at the hospital to finally be seen.

And if it was not for the support of my team and my supervisor, I probably would have been there longer.

is needed for the help that myself, my team, my coworkers, my agency deal with every day.

We are constantly changing, improving lives, helping with trauma, outreaching clients in encampments, under a bridge, in a tent, in the alley, and other places that most people would not step foot in.

This work is so rewarding and it's tough work all at the same time.

I won't say I don't carry this home, but it would be easier if I had others like myself, my team, and my agency to help continue to improve the life of others.

Thanks for letting me borrow your ears.

Now I ask you, please use your voice for me so you can advocate for the funding we need to make more of an impact and a difference in the work that we do.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you all.

Marguerite Richard, the Mass Coalition, number 23, and Alex Finch is 24.

Okay, good day, everyone.

First of all, I would like to give homage to those that are suffering from breast cancer, going through a healing, have already been healed, and so this is for you.

My prayers are with you.

It's Breast Cancer Month.

So I do think there should be some funding for them.

Those are suffering from a great illness.

And they're in our community, too.

They said black women is at a high rate.

So it's called generational poverty and community trauma.

And our community is being severely traumatized, just like the verdict on that man that was killed in Texas.

It affects all of us because that's what Dr. King said.

Reverend, don't forget he was a reverend.

And I'm ashamed to say that I was born in the state of Washington.

It is what they told me is the racist state.

in the union.

So what do you expect a black person to do?

Yeah, move along.

Just like I told Sound Transit.

I said, I have to address you.

I don't even know why I have to address you.

You're trying to take my free speech from me.

And now they have a movie out called Harriet Tubman.

Did you know who she was?

I'm not going back.

You go back and fix what you done did to us and this is 2019 and you're still traumatizing us.

What's wrong with you?

That's what I asked them over there at Sound Transit.

You got a problem?

You better fix it right now.

Now faith is.

Now, not tomorrow, right now is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Even though we don't see it, we yet believe.

And then Reverend Jackson said, keep hope alive.

You tell me what kind of hope you got in us the way you've been treating us for the past.

Thank you.

Thank you, Marguerite.

Thank you.

Mass Coalition, Alex Finch.

Number 25 is the Duwamish valley safe streets.

So mass coalition and then Alex.

I think you just turned it off.

There you go.

Speak loud.

Hello, council members.

So we are here with the MAS coalition, Move All Seattle Sustainably.

MAS is a coalition of transportation and climate groups bringing some urgency to shifting how people travel around our city.

We are pushing for an equitable, safe, carbon-free transportation system.

And we have a few words to share about the transportation budget.

There are some things that we like in the mayor's proposed transportation budget, but we also think that you as a council have the ability to make it even better.

We would like to see more dedicated bus lanes and signal priority in Seattle.

We're still looking at what exactly is planned for next year, but whatever it is, we would like more.

And we also support the city's transportation equity agenda.

And we ask the council to prioritize this work and make sure that it has the resources and the staff needed so that it can be implemented department wide.

Hello, members of the council.

My name is Seth Esmason and I'm from Cascade Bicycle Club.

And I just wanted to say that we're very happy that there are funds earmarked for bicycle plan or routes in the bicycle master plan as well as bike maintenance.

And we just wanted to say that those things are essential and that Seattle needs to return to its leadership role in implementing bicycle routes for the city, much the way it did in 2007 when it introduced the Complete Streets Ordinance, being the first people in the nation to do that for a city.

And we...

Yes, we need to specifically fund routes that are in the bicycle master plan in Southeast Seattle, just as were included in the recent resolution passed unanimously by the council.

Hi, I'm Clara Cantor from Seattle Neighborhood Greenways.

We're also asking the council to fund an active transportation coordinator position to help kids get safely to and from school in Seattle.

and to restore funding for the Safe Routes to School program that was siphoned off last year into the general fund.

We'd also like to thank Council Member Juarez and the entire rest of the council and the mayor's office for increasing the pedestrian budget for the pedestrian master plan and the ADA budgets.

This is really important and we hope that the full council protects and maintains those increases to build more sidewalks up in North Seattle where we don't have sidewalks on a lot of our major transit pathways and the other places where that pedestrian money is going.

We're in the middle of a pedestrian safety crisis right now.

Deaths and injuries are at the highest since they've been in 2010. And we all know that those deaths and injuries fall disproportionately with the unhoused among us, with low-income folks, people of color, disabled people, and with elders.

So thank you very much for those increases.

Hi Council, Alice with 350. Such heart-rending stories here tonight.

I remember one council candidate saying, how can we, climate is a luxury when we have people on the streets.

And she actually meant it, and the whole room booed, and yet I feel a little bit like that in this moment speaking to you.

But we can't afford that.

Our children and our grandchildren can't afford us to drop the ball on climate.

And I'm tremendously grateful that you all have signed on to the Seattle Grand New Deal, are working as hard as you can to create the low carbon in-city housing and transportation that we all need, and that we know we can do equitably so that people getting to their shift early in the morning, don't have to take an Uber, they can take a bus.

As we build out our transportation system, our city becomes more just and becomes better for all of us.

And I want to thank you all for the work that you're doing every day and in this pandemic, this budget for a greener city that's better for all of us here and now, and better for our kids and our grandkids and people across the globe who need these changes so desperately.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you very much from the Mass Coalition.

Alex, then 25 is Duwamish Valley Safe Streets, and 26 is Dr. Jeffrey Perkins.

Hi.

Hi again Council Member Bagshaw and everybody else.

My name is Alex Finch and I am a resident of Nicholsville Northlake.

It's the tiny house village just north of Ivor Salmon House on Lake Union.

Nicholsville offered me the stability I needed to get my life back together and I took it.

Recently that stability has been called into question by HSD and Lehigh.

At a recent Community Advisory Committee meeting HSD manager Adrian Easter stated that the village will close unless Lehigh complies with the performance improvement plan that they set forward.

Not our compliance, the villagers compliance, but Lehigh's.

We also received a letter from HSD stating that any follow-up will be done with Lehigh and not us.

Since then, Lehigh has demanded that the villagers comply with HMIS.

This is the case manager's duty, but he hasn't shown up to the village since the beginning of August.

And before that, he only showed up two days a week and not full-time as the Lehigh and HSD contract required.

Over the past week, we in the village have learned that in the mayor's budget, it states that the city will spend $1,262,000 to close us and the Georgetown encampment, as well as relocate us to other Lehigh-Rand encampments.

We are tired of being treated like children by Lehigh and HSD.

We are tired of living in fear of this situation.

Both Lehigh and HSD are causing the village undue stress and anger, and I cannot state this enough.

We are not children.

We are adults that can fully reason and understand whatever is being said to us.

If there's something that regards our future continuance at the village, then we, as the village, need to be part of this and not We need to be kept in the loop and not from third-hand information from somewhere else.

If the mayor wants to renege on her promise of opening a thousand tiny houses, she needs to do it in person and not through puppets and fine print in the budget.

Instead, use that 1.3 million to open more tiny house villages.

We just need the land to use.

We're not asking for operating costs.

We have a potential sponsor to sponsor us, religious sponsor.

Thank you very much.

That's all we need.

Thank you.

Duwamish Valley, over here.

We're members of Duwamish Valley Safe Streets.

We're neighbors, workers, and students, and business owners who want a safe network of streets for people in Seattle, particularly in Georgetown and South Park greater area.

Many of us couldn't make it to the event this evening, but community members from South Park and Georgetown wanted to spend a special thank you card to Lisa and Bruce.

Thank you for representing our neighborhoods and thank you for supporting the Georgetown to South Park Trail.

We want to say thank you to Councilmember Harold, Gonzalez, O'Brien, and Johnson for sponsoring the 2017 green sheet that got this project started.

And without initial funding, our community has been busy.

We've been working with SDOT to create a broadly supported community plan for the trail.

We've been securing Neighborhood Street Fund funding to fix a problematic intersection.

We're working with City Light and Parks to secure a vacant parcel of land needed for the trail.

And SDOTA will be completing 30% design at the end of this year, exhausting funding.

Everything is in place to continue to finish the design and connect Georgetown and South Park.

So please don't leave us hanging in budget limbo.

We're ready to connect.

And you wanna say something about that?

Hi, my name is Chelsea.

I live in Capitol Hill, but I use these routes to commute to Boeing Field by bicycle, and it would be a really big safety improvement in order to have safe, protected routes to bike down to Boeing Field.

So thank you for your consideration.

We're also here in solidarity with the Duwamish tribe and we're here to support their request for funding an SDOT design project that would finally make it so that people could actually cross West Marginal Way and reach our First Peoples cultural longhouse without having to wear safety vests and put out orange cones.

So please find some funding for that.

Also, lastly, in the last 13 years, 17 people have died and 125 people have been seriously injured on the streets of Seattle's industrial district.

That's more than any other neighborhood in the city.

There are 29 vehicular lanes to choose from in that area, and the latest BIMP, Bicycle Implementation Plan, has committed to finally find a solution.

Erica will say more about that.

Hi, my name is Erica.

I'm an urban designer and planner, and I'm also a South Seattle resident.

I worked with my firm on the Georgetown Mobility Study and wanted to support this team and my fellow neighbors in this resolution that has recently been brought forth to improve South Seattle bicycle infrastructure.

South Seattle has, as you know, had a long history of poorly infrastructure projects and poorly funded implementation of promises throughout our history.

And I really encourage all of you to use this opportunity to create stronger connections for these communities who really need them to the jobs and the opportunities that exist in the center of our city that so many people can't access right now.

Bicycling and walking has historically been by far the most cost-effective and healthy way of our moving through in and out of the physical spaces that we live in every day and for many of Seattle residents.

These aren't opportunities that they have.

So please support this resolution.

Bring funding so that other people can be engaged and kind of have a healthier style of living that we pride ourselves in here in Seattle.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you all for making the tough budget decisions ahead.

And I think we'll let Dr. Perkins speak for the tribe for the rest of our time.

Very good.

Thank you so much for coming.

Dr. Perkins, just a moment, please.

And David Haynes.

And number 29 is Steve Daschle.

Thank you for coming.

Thank you.

Either one.

Just keep talking.

Is that better?

Yes.

Okay.

It's now, for the last three years I've been with Cecile Hansen.

I was introduced to the tribe from the Suquamish Reservation people when they invited me out to an event.

And that was about three years ago.

But they had some needs.

and they do not have access to experts like myself every day.

So I was so impressed with the tribe to I agreed to help to see if we can bridge some of those needs and we're getting there and we're getting there with the help of the city and here's the report because y'all will have a copy working with District 1, Ms. Lisa Herbo, she has distributed some fact sheets that we have compiled.

My research has shown that the Duwamish Tribe, with very little public investment, have, right now this is their 10th year anniversary since the Lone House was built in 2009, and over 50,000 people from all over the world have come through those doors.

They have come through there with very little public investment but that's West Marginal Way is so dangerous and you've all been there to cross that street.

The danger with the school bus is coming in.

We're asking you all to support the green sheet to support the SDOT project to slow the traffic down.

SDOT is working on bridging from five lanes to two And it will be a good thing if people can safely cross that street.

There's a parking across on the other side.

Put the sidewalk, pave the sidewalk.

It's time now.

After 10 years of public benefits, it is a regional asset according to Councilman Joe McDermott, King County Councilman.

And the tribe, their history is just so incredible.

It has been a pleasure to serve Cecile Hansen.

They are honorable people.

They're quiet people.

They're conservative people.

And they're always telling me to relax because They know that I have to respect their customs and, you know, because I've been out in the streets all my life as an advocate, revolutionary, you name it, but I have to, you know, adapt.

And on that note, please support Dave Greensheet to put the $2 million in the budget so SDOT can get that road fixed.

And thank you very much.

And good job.

You all are doing, contrary with the hard needs that you have.

I applaud you.

All right, Steve, just hold this a second, please.

David Haynes is 27, Steve Daschle is 29, and Ed Bronson is 30. Aaron's been put the number in, not speaking.

Please, go ahead.

Yeah, city council, good evening.

This is the most racist, divisive budget the 21st century has ever seen in this nation, and it further implodes society.

The budget proves the Seattle Police Department will forever be in violation of police reform.

Seattle police are being rewarded over time to biasly target homeless as criminals while purposely exempting low-level drug pushers who destroy lives daily.

Dan Satterberg, the county prosecutor who misleads failed his own sister who was a victim of the drug pushers and the sex crime violators.

Yet Dan Satterberg embraces the disgrace that destroys life as if he wants the whole county to suffer his loss of his dead sister.

As he cowardly exempts evil drug pushers that destroy lives daily.

City Council should act like a real mom and stop sympathizing with the devil's underworld minions.

In fact, we need a FEMA security tent to force the breaking of the habits of the repeat offenders.

If you put them in housing, they only become more rested and sophisticated to conduct uncivil war...

Anyway...

Who, uh...

Okay.

Yet the homeless industrial complex refuses to help innocent, sober, drug-free, upstanding, houseless people because they don't qualify under the race and social justice lens that scorned educations of hate apply when they discriminate unfairly.

It should be called a racist, antisocial, injustice lens.

Hiring ignobles in social welfare that dare subhuman mistreat while subjecting people to their lived experience is proof we need a mass firing of leadership tasked with solving societal problems caused by treasonous and unconstitutional policies.

Mayor Durkin, as Attorney General, sabotaged the 2012 police reform by slipping a sentence that exempts drug pushers, starting the great implosion we see today that is being further rewarded with cops acting like a hero to business communities, subjecting homeless to stealing their personal belongings to force them out.

There's more to say, but it's not fair.

You should reject his budget out of the principles of solving the homeless crisis, not further paying off these social welfare activists.

Thank you, David.

Steve Daschle.

Hi, Steve.

Ed Bronstein is 30 and DSA is 31.

Good evening, council members.

My name is Steve Daschle.

I'm the executive director of Southwest Youth and Family Services and co-chair of the Seattle Human Services Coalition.

SHSC members, thank you again for your actions this summer to enact an automatic annual adjustment for inflation on all human services contracts through HSD.

Of course, we support the funding the Mayor has proposed to accomplish this.

The Mayor's budget also continues funding for current human services.

We urge the Council to follow suit and make no cuts to human services.

What the mayor did not include is the funding to take the first step to correct the long-term legacy of underpaying human services workers for the skills, education, experience, and integral importance of this work to build well-being in communities across Seattle.

You have all expressed concern with this precarious state of inequity and as well as interest in remedying it.

It's time now to take the first step.

We recommend that the City of Seattle, in collaboration with providers, conduct a pay equity analysis of human services jobs as compared with jobs that require similar levels of skill, education, and difficulty.

We urge council members to allocate the resources for robust, comparable worth analysis of benchmark jobs.

This would require 500,000 to 600,000 in 2020. We also support the funding in the budget to implement a much needed countywide domestic violence hotline and encourage council members to invest in the five additional actions outlined in our recommendations that we've shared with you.

The members of SHSC, thank you for your leadership.

Together, we can build a just and thriving community if we make it our priority, including a budget priority.

Thank you.

Thank you, Steve.

Okay, after Steve Daschle, we have Ed, number 30, good to see you.

Always appreciate Outdoor For All.

And DSA is 31, and David, oh boy, Treeweiler is 32.

Thank you, Councilmembers.

It's an honor to be here.

Democracy's messy, isn't it?

You guys suffer a lot of slings and arrows.

It's, if only our country could have more civil discourse, and I'm proud to be part of that here in Seattle.

I particularly want to acknowledge Councilmember Juarez and Councilmember Pacheco for their advocacy, others as well.

Thank you to Mayor Durkin, who has proposed one-time funding in the Parks Department Capital Improvement Plan to help emphasize key city priorities.

You all have city priorities and the budget talks about that.

As Executive Director of Outdoors for All, an organization for 40 years that's been committed on social equity for people with disabilities.

Disability does not mean inability.

and disability is diversity.

If only our city could improve its own assets, of course a key priority.

If only our city could collaborate with a nonprofit that would match every dollar from the city with eight dollars in other funding.

If only this one-time funding could create an incredible community treasure and renovate what is a community liability for 25 years, an unused firehouse, and transform it into a community recreation center for all.

For recovering veterans, for children with limb difference, for youth with autism, for thousands more people with disabilities, if only this was possible.

If only we could transform a dormant building and turn it into a community treasure that will benefit people with disabilities and everyone else for decades to come.

I'm here to tell you it's not possible, it will happen, and we very much appreciate your advocacy for this issue, for this one-time funding, for capital funds.

It's gonna help thousands more people with disabilities for decades to come.

Outdoors for All Foundation, thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Ed, for being here.

DSA, 31, David, 32, and Michelle, 33.

Hi, good evening.

My name is Sabrina Villanueva.

I'm a property manager and I'm here voicing some concerns of my tenants.

We manage several buildings in downtown with hundreds of tenants, mostly small businesses, companies that have 10 people or less.

therapists, a piano maker, tea shop, barber, environmental consultants, regular everyday people that are just trying to make a living.

And I am seeing firsthand the negative impacts that the public safety issues have had on our tenants.

Car prowls, trespassing, aggressive harassment and burglaries.

These people are being victimized.

Their employees, their customers are trying to navigate how to safely commute into the city, and they no longer feel safe.

They don't want to renew their leases.

They want to leave Seattle.

And here's an example of why.

Our building was, one of the properties was broken into twice by the same individual.

They robbed multiple tenant spaces.

The police identified them, arrested them, and two days later let him out.

He came back to the same building.

He burglarized the same building again.

There's 21 open burglaries on this one individual.

Apparently there's laws that need to be enforced and people need to be held accountable for these actions.

And that's why we support the mayor's budget to increase funding for public safety, for crime prevention and the prolific offender initiative.

In addition, our hope is that the council uses this funding to persuade the city prosecutor to abandon a tolerance policy that has led to the documented proliferation of repeat offenders and create a safe Seattle for everyone.

Thank you.

Please, hey, wait.

No, please.

Everybody's listening to you when you speak, and I want to have a little decorum out here.

Please, go ahead.

Hi, my name is Aaron.

I oversee operations at multiple office, retail, and residential properties that house also small business owners and longtime residents in Seattle.

Sabrina and I were brought together by the Seattle Police Department because we shared a Our properties were both victims of this gentleman that she spoke of that has been terrorizing and burglarizing many different buildings in Seattle.

So I speak on behalf of hundreds of tenants and staff members who feel unsafe at their homes, their businesses, and places of employment.

In 2019, in a four-month period, several tenants in one of our buildings fell victim to three of those burglaries all performed by the same individual.

This is really just one example of the several prolific offenders that our properties have felt victim to in the past year alone.

It's my understanding that that gentleman has been arrested and released multiple times despite our efforts to have him prosecuted for the crimes he's committed.

We've got photographic evidence in each instance and we're really just trying to support our tenants and staff that feel unsafe knowing that our justice system continues to catch and release prolific criminals like this gentleman with little to no accountability for their actions.

So collectively, you know, we fear that more criminals will follow suit, knowing that they won't be held accountable for burglarizing, vandalizing, as well as assaulting and harassing our tenants and staff and residents.

I'm here to support the increase of the public safety budget so we can support the residents of Seattle and send a message to the current offenders and future offenders that the city of Seattle will not tolerate violent and damaging criminal activity, and those who break the law will be punished in accordance with the law.

I am in full support of the diversion programs, but I think that there's a line that needs to be drawn.

Thank you.

Thank you.

After David, please.

Michelle is 33. Alicia is 34. Heather Walker is 35. So, please, David.

Thank you.

My name is David Treeweiler, and I'm here as a private citizen, although I am a member of the Cascade Bike Club, and I fully support the Green New Deal.

And I was happy to see the work that the council has been doing to make that a reality.

And this council has recognized in recent meetings and ordinances the urgency of reducing carbon pollution.

I think an incredible number of words have been spoken in these meetings about that, and I think the council is on the same page as the people who support the Green New Deal.

But of critical assistance to reducing carbon pollution is getting people out of cars more often, especially single-person commutes and short trips.

And as the council is well aware, there are many ways to do this.

Buses, light rail, increased bike use, which is what I'm here to talk about, and also a decreasing or at least not increasing car infrastructure.

If we want to get people out of cars, we have to stop making it more convenient to drive and make other things more convenient to use.

I'm here to urge continued progress on and funding of the bicycle portion of the climate crisis solutions.

I urge the council to do the following, which are not all of the things that need to be done, but I think they're some of the most immediate and concrete things the council can do to support the bicycle portion of these solutions.

Number one, work with the SDOT to put bike lanes on 35th Avenue Northeast.

I know the council has heard a lot about that.

There have been some opposition to it, but I've biked in that area many times, and there's a lot of bike use up there, and it needs to be done.

Fund key connections to the Bicycle Master Implementation Plan.

Can you wrap up, David?

Yes.

If you have another point or two.

Yes.

We must use cars less.

We must take specific concrete steps to do this.

We must make progress faster than we think is currently possible.

Great.

Thank you so much for coming down tonight.

Michelle?

And then Alicia and then 35 is Heather Walker.

Hi, I'm a special education teacher and the McKinney-Vento Homeless Outreach Coordinator at Nova High School, but I'd like to enter rank and file member of the Seattle Education Association.

I'd like to start by speaking first in solidarity with Rainier Beach High School and in support of Freedom School.

which is supporting student-led and community-based solutions like free transit passes for high school students, facilitating restorative justice circles, and training for teachers on how to recognize and address bias.

Nova High School was a recipient of People's Budget funding last year for our LGBTQ health center.

NOVA's 70% LGBTQ identifying, 47% Title I eligible, 10% McKinney-Vento homeless qualified, and 40% disability document bearing.

The Health Center helps us serve our students.

The People's Budget's impact on schools is powerful, and we are incredibly grateful.

But a larger need district-wide that these items will not address is housing.

We also need to fight for the right to counsel for evictions to keep our families housed.

We need more, not fewer, or moved and then not rebuilt tiny houses.

And we need more publicly owned housing.

This is why the Seattle Education Association earlier this year gave its unanimous support to the end of economic evictions and support for the rent control draft legislations opposed by Shama Sawant.

We're doing this to support our nearly 4,000 homeless students and families.

We also know there are thousands more students facing housing affordability in this crisis.

We were hoping that we would be able to have The people of the full council honor the work that we did.

My SEA colleagues and I this summer met with lots of families and renters and we heard a lot of stories.

Our union is committed to supporting this mandate to push for rent control and we hope that you would be able to too.

We met with many people who gave us statements and gathered signatures and heard their stories.

Their stories are the stories of our students.

Their stories are the stories of a lot of people in Seattle.

So please, if you could consider our schools and our students and our need for rent control, that would be really important this budget season.

Thank you.

Thank you for coming, Michelle.

Alicia, then Heather, then Rayelle, number 36.

Can you address our time for Heather Walker?

I'm sorry, we have Alicia.

Hi, I'm Alicia Roberts and we are Nicholsville Northlake residents.

Yes.

Good evening, Seattle City Council.

Our names are Kelly McCluskey and Lori Perry.

We live at Nicholsville, Northlake.

It is a tiny house village at 3814 4th Avenue Northeast.

We are commenting today on the Mayor's H or Human Service Department proposal budget.

On page 182, there is an incremental budget change titled resitting tiny house villages.

Please do not spend the $1.2 million.

HSD and the mayor wants to spend closing our home and a second tiny house village.

All we are asking is that the Human Service Department and the Low Income Housing Institute leave us alone.

HSD says it is willing to hear our side, but they are not ready to work with us.

They want us to shut us down.

Sure sounds like HSD is just trying to tell us how to be homeless, but we are adults and we are taking charge of our lives.

HSD understanding of how we live at Northlake is totally the opposite of the way it is.

HSD and Lehigh have destroyed our carefree, happy routine of standing on our own two feet.

What good have they really done for us?

Forcefully bullying and intimidation is not the way to help us.

It is not how we run our village.

If anyone needs a copy of our rules, by all means, please ask and we'll give it to you.

We are not children mixed up in a divorce and HSD and Lehigh problems.

They too get to play these childish, ignorant games.

We want to be done with the damage Lehigh and HSD have caused.

Let us live at Northlake with gift of grace for our church sponsor.

Nicholsville doesn't need your operating dollars.

We just need the land.

My name's John Trevino.

I live up at Nicholsville, Northlake, too.

And I'd just like to echo what they said, and Alex Finch, and it just seems like there's, you know, Nicholsville's existed for 11 years.

It is its own culture.

I always tell a friend of mine there, I can't imagine living somewhere else at this time, you know, with the cost of living, and he always says, You might be profoundly homeless, John.

I mean, I think there's a place for us and for Lehigh.

We know they're the big dog now.

They're here to stay.

Thanks for your time.

Thank you for coming.

Heather?

Do you have a group?

Okay.

Tony, we have another group.

Thank you.

Hi.

Please introduce yourselves.

Good evening.

My name is Heather Walker, and I am an enrolled member of the Chehalis tribe and a new resident of Seattle, and I'm here with a group to talk about Indigenous Peoples' Day.

And it's a celebration that's coming up here shortly.

This year it's on October the 14th.

And each and every one of you here in the room have an opportunity to celebrate the First Peoples of this area.

And I want to talk about that for a little bit because while we have the opportunity to celebrate, we're also struggling with funding and having to ask around for donations and all kinds of things in order to make that day happen.

This evening we gather on the ancestral homelands of many Coast Salish peoples who have lived along the Salish Sea since time immemorial.

Please join us in celebrating all of these indigenous people for their enduring care and protection of our sacred land and waterways.

has been home to many modern indigenous people.

Many people have called this place home and lived here while many others regularly visited for resources, ceremonies, and fun.

Some of their ancestors signed treaties, such as the Point Elliott Treaty and the Medicine Creek Treaty.

Today, you may call these first caretakers by their modern affiliations of Duwamish, Suquamish, Muckleshoot, Snoqualmie, Puyallup, still a Guamish, or perhaps you might call them Swinomish, Tulalip, or Nisqually.

You may further recognize the urban Indians that have moved to this urban landscape and called this place Seattle home.

They have been moved away from their traditional homelands and chose Seattle as their place, which also includes me now.

I would like to thank each and every one of you for the work that you do.

Raise my hands to you and please ask you to fully fund this day of celebration with all of us.

So I'm here, it's critical that I'm here to value our Indian city and our Indian communities by supporting rent control, Indigenous Peoples Day, missing and murdered indigenous women, and thank you guys, council members, Schwant, Juarez, Harold for supporting those.

We cannot continue these atrocities throughout Indian country, such as homelessness, infant mortality, missing and murdered indigenous women.

We need to do better with our budget, math.

Our first ask of $25,000 for Indigenous Peoples Day was at a minimum.

As a city employee, Indigenous Peoples Day has been a race and social justice event for employees.

And it's and it's important to to value that training.

that day, that training.

When we decrease our budget, it usually affects people of color first.

And we did that with CareerQuest.

We eliminated training dollars in the city for City of Seattle employees.

So instead of removing those training dollars switch those monies towards the Indigenous Peoples Day.

So both our communities can support Indigenous Peoples Day and our and Indigenous Peoples Day to support that day.

It is time to acknowledge our land, our ancestors, the Duwamish people through the People's Budget and stop nickel and diming our Native communities.

Thank you.

I want to introduce myself.

My name is Patricia Allen.

I am on Tlingit and Haida Tribal Council as an elected delegate, as well as the coalition community advocate for Chief Seattle Club.

I wanted really quickly to just write remarks that I am on the committee for the Daybreak Star United Indian Celebration.

And a lot of our funding comes from this as well.

And we really do need this.

We're getting packed houses of people wanting to travel all over the city from all over the state to come here and celebrate with us.

This year, Tulalip, we have the honor of people from Tulalip coming in and joining Solidarity.

I'm also on the MLK Day planning committee and have the honor of that as well.

And I felt really empowered whenever I go there.

And so if you check out If you check out their budget as well, I'm not gonna compare, I'm not gonna name their budget to compare, but I want you to check that out because I would like for our community to have great impacts as well as similar or complementary to days like MLK Day.

So, Gunalchéesh, thank you.

Next speakers, we've got Ray Yeo, number 36, and it looks like True, or Trey probably, number 37, and Lou Bella-Bowen, 38. Good, hi.

Good evening, council members.

So I'm actually replaced, Ray Yeo, who had to go to another commitment, but my name is Alexandra Nadevias, and I'm an attorney with Legal Counsel for Youth and Children.

And today I'm gonna talk to you a little bit about our Youth Homelessness Program, which works to improve the well-being of young people by advocating for their legal rights.

Before I do that, I did just want to take a moment to acknowledge everybody in the room and every council member as well for just taking action steps on addressing the homelessness problem in Seattle.

I'm born and raised in Seattle, and so I definitely appreciate all the advocates in the room today.

We, our attorneys at our agency provide direct legal services through four different programs, Child Welfare, Juvenile Court, Youth and Family Immigration, and Youth Homelessness.

I'm here today on behalf of Legal Counsel for Youth and Children to seek support for our Youth Homelessness Legal Services Program.

Through this program, we provide critical, holistic, civil legal aid services to hundreds of young people ages 12 to 24. These are folks who are at risk of experiencing homelessness in Seattle.

The majority of the youth we serve are youth of color.

20% of the youth identify as LGBTQ+, and 17% are immigrant youth, and 50% are under the age of 18. We address a number of civil legal issues that directly impact young people's safety, stability, access to education, employment, income, and housing.

Some of the issues we are able to advocate for are allowing them to address any outstanding warrants, allowing them to seal criminal records, reducing or eliminating medical debt, accessing child protective services when needed, orders of protection, name and gender marker changes, landlord-tenant issues, and public benefits.

Over the years, our referrals have steadily increased as we've created more partners in the community.

This year we're requesting, we have zero money right now from the city, and this year we're requesting $100,000 for the 2020 supplemental budget, which will provide 1,500 hours of direct legal services for young people.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for coming.

The next one is, I think it's Trey, Orca for All, then Lubella, Bowen, which is 38, and Sean Smith, 39. Just a second.

I think it's just one minute.

We've already seen from our good friends.

I'm Ty Reed.

I'm here from Orca for All.

I'm with the Transit Riders Union.

Orca for All envisions a near future when every resident and every worker in Seattle and King County has an unlimited transit pass in hand, making it easy to choose public transit.

We believe that mobility is a human right.

We also believe, know that a rapid shift to low carbon modes of transportation is urgently needed to avert climate catastrophe.

Our region can lead in realizing this vision and set an aspiring example for other cities around the country.

Success will require action by governments, employers, and individuals.

Today, we are calling on city leaders to step up.

The city of Seattle provides fully subsidized transit passes for all direct employees of the city.

This practice is consistent with the city's sustainability and equity goals.

That's great.

A plus for that work.

However, thousands more workers are employed through city and county contracts.

This includes construction workers on public works projects and employees of human service providers, among others.

Many of these workers do not receive any transit subsidy.

The result is a two-tier system where direct public employees receive full transit benefits, but indirect employees do not.

This is not only inequitable for these workers, it also contributes to our region's rising carbon emissions, pollution, and traffic congestion.

We ask the city of Seattle to adopt as an official goal that workers employed through public contracts should receive transit benefits.

Establish a timeline and take steps towards achieving this outcome, such as review and study the current landscape of city contracts to determine which categories of workers should be prioritized for receiving transit benefits, and different possible strategies for ensuring that these workers receive transit benefits.

That's for Transit Writers Union.

I would just say after hearing all of these stories about homelessness, I think that we should consider that while we're thinking about ways to divvy up our hard-earned money, we should look around and observe the fact of who's here.

I don't see any CEOs and I certainly don't see any converse members.

Look at us and remember our faces and remember our stories because when you go back to your offices and decide who lives and who dies in the city, it's going to be people in this room who matter.

Thank you.

And number 38. And would you introduce yourselves, please?

And we've got five minutes here for this group.

My name is Benjamin Shabazz.

This is Ludella.

This is Eula Breeland.

This is Donna Jean.

And we represent some of the residents at the Brighton Apartments in South Seattle.

I need the thing.

What is it?

This is to our representative to all of you.

Bruce Harrell.

These are written petitions of people on rent control.

We're here for rent control tonight.

I'm here because I was here last week.

Sorry we missed you.

So we decided to bring it to you, then maybe you have time to read them to Bruce Harrell.

And we live at the Brighton.

I've been there 15, almost 16 years.

And right now we're facing a dilemma of being moved out because of rent.

We're all seniors.

This is a senior-led building.

It's also a building where when we first moved in, we were charged according to our income, and because of the area that we're in now, it's just off the chart.

It's more than we can afford.

The rent is superseding our income.

We're seniors.

We paid our dues as seniors, and now we're retired, and now we're faced with limited income, and now we don't know what we're going to do.

We are a community.

We have been there, everybody that's been there, been 19, 20, 22 years, and we don't wanna have to move.

We look out for each other, we take care of each other, everybody knows their neighbor, and we love being there and we'd like to stay.

So if we feel like we can solve this problem on rent control, then we would be thoroughly happy.

And I want you all to know that I'm in it for the long haul, I'm in it to win it, and we will in the end, with God on our side, we will.

And I want everybody to know that I am a winner.

I am a winner.

We are a winner if we stick together.

We've been talking about it to each other and so now we want to publicly let everyone know that we're on board for rent control because it's ridiculous.

You know, it's needed.

What are we going to do?

Somebody has to speak up and say something or it'll go unnoticed.

Thank you for your time.

you by thanking our courageous council member Kasama Shawant.

I want to thank you very much.

It takes courage and a human spirit to speak up for what they call a little man.

We want to thank you for that.

We need rent control.

Like we said before, we reside at the Brighton Apartments.

We have seniors there, veterans there, and also people that have challenges, physical challenges.

We live in an apartment complex that has 125 units.

People live on low income, fixed income, social security, et cetera, et cetera.

Some are on dialysis.

Many are sick and disabled.

The management is trying to do a good job.

They're trying to manage the situation, but it will soon be out of their control.

If rent control is not enacted, our elders should not have to be scared and frightened every day facing an unstable future.

And what that leads to is economic eviction.

will be the order of the day.

Economic eviction will put our elders out on the streets.

People on dialysis, people over 90 years old, people on walkers, grandmothers and great-great-grandmothers, because it will be impossible to pay the rent.

Rent control is a necessity.

What do we want?

Rent control!

When do we want it?

Now!

What do we want?

Rent control!

When do we want it?

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Sean Smith.

Thank you.

My name is Donna Jean and I appreciate the fact that you guys decided to come here tonight.

You need to hear what the people have to say in regards to their livelihood.

You really need to take the time and sacrifice the time.

When we were here on September the 23rd, none of you were here.

So we say thank you for coming here, but you should have been here last time, and you certainly should be here from here on out.

Thank you.

Okay, Sean, before you get started, we've got Devin Silvernail is 40, Laura Wright is 41, and could I please ask those in the back who have their cell phones on to either mute it or not be watching the game while this is going on.

So we have Sean, good to see you again, and then Devin, then Laura at 41.

Good evening council.

My name is Sean Smith.

I am the external affairs coordinator for occupied Nicholsville Othello village We're here with a very simple ask tonight It has been painfully clear since October or April 8th when our village was invaded and and the management taken away from us.

The true self-management is not supported by the city or HSD.

What we're asking for you to do is support real self-management.

We're asking you to allow Northlake to stay in place and be a self-managed community with a religious sponsor.

We're asking you to help us at Othello find a location on city land, and we'll find a religious sponsor.

We don't need the city funding in order to continue on the hard work that we do daily.

Our job is to save lives.

Let's get back to it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Sean.

Can I ask Devin and then Laura Wright and Jessica Scalzo, number 42, to approach the microphones?

Please go ahead, Devin.

Good evening, council members.

My name is Devin Silvernail.

I'm executive director of Be Seattle.

We're an organization that, among other things, does tenant rights training, education and organizing in the city of Seattle.

I'm here tonight because, you know, through our through our programs, we've gone out into the community and every single one of your districts and provided tenant education and outreach work through a program called Tenant Rights Boot Camp.

We've, over the past three years, done 45 of those across Seattle.

We've done that on a very minimal budget and an all-volunteer basis.

All of our donations have come through small-dollar donations from people here in Seattle.

And through that work, we've been able to help hundreds, not really, even thousands of tenants get education.

We've been able to help tenants fight back against rent gouging, against landlord retaliation, against repair issues.

We're even working here with the folks from the Brighton Apartments on their issues as well.

And that's, I'm coming here because we, to continue doing that work in a consistent way, we need to have a bigger budget.

And so we're asking as part of the people's budget this year that you fund tenant rights boot camp, that you expand this kind of outreach work that we're doing to help tenants in the city.

I also wanted to come here as co-chair of the Seattle Renters Commission, a commission that recommended to every single person up here in April to support rent control in Seattle.

We didn't actually just recommend council members to want.

So I know that for reasons you weren't able to come to the meeting on Monday for the Renter's Rights Committee, but I do have these beautiful petitions for you.

And I know Council Member Herbold, we talked, you are a town and advocate, so I know that you'll like these.

I have one here for you, Council Member Herbold.

And then I have one here for you, Council Member Bagshaw.

Just read these stories.

I think they're going to touch you, and then I know that you will make the right decision and support us in Seattle for rent control.

Because what do we want?

Rent control!

And when do we want it?

Now!

What do we want?

Rent control!

When do we want it?

Now!

Just a moment, please.

Jessica is 42, if you'll line up.

And Emily, 43. Hi.

Good evening, council members.

My name is Laura Wright.

I'm a community organizer, educator, and nonprofit leader proudly representing Rainier Beach High School in the Rainier Beach neighborhood where I've lived for 13 years.

I'm here today in solidarity and support of the People's Budget Movement, and I'd like to highlight a particular budget item on the People's Budget, the Rainier Beach Freedom Schools Program.

It has been 55 years since Freedom Summer when young revolutionaries sought to dismantle the merciless, white supremacist, domestic terrorist state of Mississippi by strategic mobilization through Freedom Schools, voter registration, and the creation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.

55 years later, here we are amid continued domestic terrorism against black and brown lives in every institution.

We know that Seattle Public Schools is one of the most inequitable school districts in the entire country.

Thus, summer is a critical time to not only ensure the most marginalized students have access to high-quality academic programming, but also is a time to innovate and mobilize against racial injustice, particularly in our public schools.

Freedom Schools is a high-impact social justice leadership program and literacy program that has become a cornerstone of youth-led action and academic excellence in the Rainier Beach community since 2015. Our program centers racial justice, civic engagement, literacy, and social justice leadership development, and has most recently become a powerful training ground for young people to become restorative justice circle keepers.

The people's budget can offer critical funding support to ensure hundreds of K through 12 scholars in the Rainier Beach neighborhood can continue to have freedom schools.

I'd like to remind you all that it is through this freedom schools program in 2015 when scholars decided to protest against the inequitable walk zone policy.

Now, four years later, we hold the victory of being the largest city in this country providing free year-round transportation for high school students through the Youth ORCA program due to the organizing work, Council Member Byron, of our Freedom Schools program.

Please continue to invest in youth-led movements like Freedom Schools.

Thank you.

Jessica, and then Emily, and then Kim, number 44.

Hi.

My name is Jessica Scalzo, and I'm here as a private citizen from District 3. Happy to say that with Councilmember Sawant.

I'm also part of, well, working with a bunch of different groups here who talked about a lot of things that I also support.

And I have a list of things that are important for me that I want to see funded more in 2020. So I stand with the ORCA for All group that came up here.

I definitely think that we desperately need that in Seattle, and also we desperately need rent control, so I'm part of that movement as well.

I'm also here with the police accountability group that I thought was gonna speak, but they're not up here, and we have a lot of good ideas to make police more accountable.

A few of them are to have a database like the police have for criminals, but we would have it for police, as well as having police live in the community that they patrol, as well as having police serve the community in some form, i.e. social work, teacher, EMT, firefighter before you can become a policeman.

Those are some ideas that are in the works right now.

I also I am very concerned about switching over to green industry and making sure that people who are in the fossil fuel industry can be given new jobs in the green industry.

And I support basically any plans that the youth climate movement or indigenous people or people of color have come up with.

Also, I am deeply concerned about gun violence and mass shootings.

And I know that at any random time, I could become a victim of gun violence.

And in Washington, I'm glad that we have extreme risk protection orders, which allow family members who feel another family member is a danger to themselves or others to petition the court to have their guns temporarily removed.

The problem, though, is that there's not enough funding to get info out about these ERPOs, and I would like to see Seattle use some of the budget to get this info out and easily available to everyone in the community.

Jessica, thank you so much.

Thank you.

Emily?

Emily, are you speaking as a group?

This is Kim, right?

I don't really need five minutes.

Okay.

You get a start.

Thank you for allowing me to be in front of you again tonight.

Hi, my name is Kim Lundgren and I'm here with the Vietnamese senior group from the Vietnamese Senior Association.

Again, We would like to thank all of council members, especially the city council members and so on, who support us for the past year to grant us funds.

And with the funds, we can get more tickets that help us with transportation so we can participate.

in senior program at different senior centers, especially those provide activity and cultural meal program.

It mean that we have opportunity to be out of the house.

That prevent us from being isolated from the community.

It help us having healthy life.

And with this fund, VSA organized some special recreation field trips for us.

For the past year, we have opportunity to visit Silicon Village, Canada, and Oregon, where we had opportunity to learn about American custom and culture.

We need VSA.

Tonight we are here.

We ask all city council members to consider our needs and continue to support us.

Your support really make difference for our life.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Welcome to all of you and thank you for coming.

Did Emily, number 43, did she leave us?

Emily?

Okay, 45 is Barbara Finney, then Adam at 46, and Chris Van Dyke at 47. Thank you.

Thank you.

Barbara's coming, just let's give her a chance.

Barbara, then Adam, then Chris Van Dyke.

Hi Council, I'm Barbara Finney from District 5, where more than 50% of the people are renters and rents are sky high.

Funding 30 more tiny house villages would help provide critical life-saving homes to people who currently sleep outside or in vehicles throughout Seattle.

including all our neighborhoods.

The navigation team sweeps are cruel and wasteful.

Council, please use the 10 million spent on sweeps instead for tiny house villages.

The Renters' Rights Committee special meeting, September 23rd, with 250 attendees.

Council Member Juarez, you were a member of that committee but did not attend or send a staff member in your place.

Constituents of yours were here, told stories about struggling to pay the rent and why they urgently support rent control.

I bring, I present to you, we present to you the copies of the Seattle Needs Rent Control Petition signed by 12,000 people and hope that you will read, read their, what they say, what the comments they make.

The Labor Union, AFGE, American Federation of Government Employees, Local 3197, representing the employees of the Seattle VA Hospital, and Seattle Democratic Socialists of America, and the Seattle Transit Riders Union have endorsed Council Member Suant's Seattle Needs Rent Control Resolution.

We call on you to endorse her rent control ordinance for citywide rent control free of corporate loopholes.

What do we need?

When do we need it?

Now!

Thank you.

Thank you.

46 Adam and then 47 Chris Van Dyke.

Okay.

Hello.

Hello.

Hi.

Hi.

I'm Adam Capelo and I'm here representing my union the UAW Local 4-1-2-1.

Yeah.

We represent over 5,000 academic student employees and over 1,000 postdocs at the University of Washington.

And we are proud to stand here with all of you this evening and declare it is time for a people's budget in Seattle.

82% of our union members are rent burdened, paying about half of their wages to the landlord.

That means that people are scraping by and sometimes foregoing health care or other basic necessities because the rent takes so much of our paycheck.

We know that this situation is unacceptable and unsustainable.

And this is why we need an affordable housing bond.

We need this bond so that we can build a lot more quality, publicly owned, union built, environmentally sustainable, affordable housing.

And we need this to keep the city livable for working people.

But we also know that building affordable housing is not enough.

With corporate developers building luxury apartment after luxury apartment, and with working people, people of color, and LGBTQ people being rapidly gentrified out of our city, and with rent averaging over $2,000 a month, it is clear Seattle needs rent control.

And Councilmember Pacheco, as a District 4 worker, I was disappointed you didn't attend the September 23rd Committee meeting on rent control.

And where is our Councilmember now?

Why isn't he here to listen to the people's needs?

As we said, over 12,000 people have signed our rent control petition, and my union and 20 other labor organizations and community organizations have passed resolutions in support of this movement.

Our voices matter.

You and the other council members need to hear our stories and support our struggle for rent control.

And that's why we're delivering a copy of the petition signatures to Council Member Pacheco's office tonight.

He stood with us before at the work session hosted by Council Member Mosqueda while the postdocs are fighting for our contract, and we ask for you to stand with us again now.

Thank you, Adam.

Chris Van Dyke, then Imogene Williams, and Tiffany McCoy.

That's number 47, 48, and 49. Excuse me.

Is that on?

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm Chris Van Dyke.

I'm a consultant in the taxi cab industry.

I am a consultant to Eastside for Hire.

There was a young woman who said there was no CEO.

Here I am, Chairman, President, CEO of Netcar Technology Corporation.

Apologize for that.

But last night I may have left you with the impression that we in the industry, I've been in this industry for 12 years, are opposed to driver equity or drivers making money.

That is far from the case.

I did not mean to leave you with that impression.

We are opposed to a proposal that raises fares on Uber, Lyft customers, but takes that fare increase and doesn't put every penny of it in the driver's pocket.

We think it is entirely disingenuous to take that revenue and put it in other city projects that may or may not benefit a driver who under current conditions is being forced to work or has to work at what any accountant will tell you is less than the cost of operation.

Our industry, in the taxi industry, our vehicles sit idle because the city mandates that we operate at 260 per mile.

You have clear legal authority under RCW Chapter 46 to set fares at $1.75 a mile.

This whole great, wonderful package from the mayor's office, it sounds nice.

And if I wasn't 67 and hadn't been 50 years around the block, around the political block, I would think it was just a rather depraved attempt to fill a budget hole that can't be filled with a less knowledgeable source.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chris.

Imogene Williams and Tiffany McCoy, 49. And then we'll go on to Joyce Motte on 50. Imogene's here for 48, then Tiffany.

Yep, 48's next, Imogene.

A people's budget, programs to help the people of our diverse city.

which we are so proud of, tiny house villages, heat, showers, which is what we were going to do with the head tax, in case you should remember.

helps people to feel dignity.

If we can get more tiny house villages, we will see the numbers of our homeless decrease at long last, at long last.

freedom school in the summer to make things more fair for our kids.

You know, the corporations give cash gifts to the schools.

Is it fair and equal?

Of course not.

Freedom summer school would begin to make it a little more equal.

It's a good idea, and we should do it.

L-E-A-D.

Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion.

Some offenders can be helped back to their communities with counseling and training.

We don't have to just lock them up and throw away the key, like some places where they do.

Any of you read Bryan Stevenson?

You did?

Absolutely.

Well, you know what I'm talking about.

We want to go a different direction here.

We want to help the offender to come back.

So think about these programs seriously because they will help our people.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Tiffany is 49, Joyce is 50, and then it looks like we have Nicholsville Tiny House, number 53.

Thank you.

My name is Tiffany McCoy.

I'm the lead organizer for Real Change.

Folks, how many of you have tried to find a toilet outside in Seattle and been unsuccessful?

Awesome, well yes that's very well known.

So Real Change is asking for five mobile pit stops to be funded in this year's city budget.

I want to thank Council Member Herbold for agreeing to sponsor this legislation and for Council Member Sawant for agreeing to co-sponsor and I'm hoping more of you agree to sign on to this.

You have meeting requests in each one of your inboxes and I hope that you Get back to me and the vendors and meet with us to talk about this program.

We have hundreds of these postcards that we're collecting around the city of Seattle.

I'd like to just take a minute to read a couple of them.

It's about a time when you were out in Seattle and unable to find a toilet.

One mother was reeling from postpartum depression and her body was still recovering from giving birth.

She couldn't find a public bathroom in Pioneer Square on a day when she finally convinced herself to leave the house.

She had to go back home.

Another was out with a friend who was in a wheelchair and could not find a bathroom that was accessible.

That should not be the case, especially post-ADA.

Another had to search for 30 minutes to find a bathroom for their family, and they had to end up leaving downtown just to find a bathroom.

Her son ended up pooping his pants.

Another individual said Tuesday morning, luckily they found a Starbucks and since they were white, they weren't harassed by the employees or glared at.

This is a frequent occurrence.

I have hundreds more of these.

I plan to share them all throughout budget.

I want to invite everyone to an action for the next public hearing right outside on the plaza.

We'll be trucking in a bunch of honey buckets and having poo emojis all over the place.

So come use the bathroom and talk to City Council about why we need to fund public toilets, finally.

And then I just heard from the Human Rights Commission, which is an endorser of this campaign.

They just met downstairs.

Council Member Bagshaw, you will be expecting a letter from them asking you to include this in your balancing packet.

So everybody poos, everybody needs a place to go.

Cheers.

Thank you, Tiffany.

All right, nice to see you.

Good evening, I'm Joyce Moody and I'm Vice President of GROW, the advocate for the Seattle Peapatch Community Garden Program.

I want to express the GROW's support for the mayor's budget proposal allocating $3 million of the sweetened beverage tax monies for the Peapatch Community Garden preservation and enhancement in the Department of Neighborhoods.

This one-time expenditure would be a life preserver to enable the city to save the Ballard Pea Patch from building development.

Ballard Pea Patch is a stellar example of how a community garden builds community, creates passive urban refuge for neighbors, and annually contributes significant amounts of fresh produce to the Ballard Food Bank.

The Community Garden Preservation and Enhancement Fund can also aid in garden relocation for other development-threatened pea patches, such as the Immaculate Conception on Capitol Hill in District 3. GROW asks that City Council also consider extending the one-year timeline for the expenditure of these funds to allow for adequate stakeholder participation in applying for the funds.

One year does not allow enough time for both departmental staff and Seattle Beverage Tax Board.

to thoughtfully and fairly administer the funds for the P-PATCH for the best outcome and with maximum benefits through land acquisition, relocation, and capital infrastructure for community gardens.

Please consider expanding the timeline to three years.

Thank you.

And give the Nome a home.

Yeah, I like it.

Thank you, Joyce.

Is there a 53?

Somebody have a 53?

Okay, moving on to 54. Is it Dino?

54?

55?

Did you sign up, sir?

When you get to be your turn, we'll listen to you.

55 is Gene Dorsey.

Good evening, finally.

Wish I'd got here earlier.

submit a budget request.

I've been a member of an all-volunteer team called the SCOF Law Mitigation Team since 2011. And thank you for having your staff member meet with us today.

I appreciate it.

And also Council Member Sawant.

As data shows, we continue to see between a third to just over a half of the unsheltered homeless living in vehicles in King County.

The largest segment is in Seattle.

At present, there is no funding effort at an intentional outreach to vehicle residents of any substantial nature that will provide them harm relief and a possible path to exit their vehicles.

We have performed scoff-out mitigation since 2011 in partnership with the Seattle Parking Enforcement and the Seattle Municipal Court.

We further advise many funded nonprofits who incidentally encounter vehicle residents and have no staff trained to address them.

We now work with LEAD and REACH, though we remain unfunded.

This proposal asks that you fund the scofflaw mitigation to include attendant harm reduction options and that the downtime between scofflaw referrals, we don't get them every day, will be utilized to do intentional vehicle outreach.

Given spending on homelessness efforts, this might be the program offering the most for the least.

And of course, it would be the only intentional outreach to vehicle residents beyond cleaning trash adjacent to RVs.

Please ask us for more information on how this will work.

You may or may not know that when Coordinated Entry for All will now require creating pathways for vehicle residents due to HUD rules, which has not occurred to date.

This type of effort would allow CEA a way to meet that requirement in Seattle.

Vehicle residents are simply not getting into the system, so they're not being counted.

Thank you, Gene.

I have my budget ask here.

So 56 is Erin Rance, and it looks like 57, 58 have crossed their names off.

59 is Mac McGregor.

So Erin Rance is next.

Hi, Erin.

Hi.

My name is Erin Rance, and thanks for listening.

I'm here as a private citizen.

The Human Services Department, the budget is $12 million for them this year, and I guess that's a 17 percent increase over last time.

And there would be better focused on more tidy house villages and safe parking areas over the navigation team and cleanup crews.

Salaries and heavy equipment for those take up a chunk of the budget.

The navigation team isn't doing much to improve the lives of people living outside.

The cleanups, the sweeps are designed to wear down the resolve of people just trying to exist in this increasingly corporatized city and move them to shelter or away from Seattle.

But you'll find that pushing people from place to place and throwing away their belongings doesn't improve their lives and doesn't make them go away.

We have to look at people's need for independence and autonomy in their living situations and respond accordingly with situations like safe parking and tiny house villages and other solutions, which I'm not mentioning because they need to come from the people who are experiencing homelessness.

And, of course, more money for heavily subsidized apartments.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

So it's Mac McGregor, number 59. Excellent.

And after Mac, we've got 60, John Perkins.

And 61, looks like Del Patterson.

Thank you, hi.

Thank you all for taking the time to listen to the community.

I support rent control and renters' rights, and thank you for the recently passing more renters' rights, but we also need to fund education around those rights and how people can access them.

I just want to remind everyone to please also include budgeting for groups like BCL and LGBTQ allyship who do renters rights boot camps and tenants right boot camps in the city and help people understand how to navigate those rights.

We can have all the rights and ordinances and legislation in the world.

If people don't know how to navigate it, it doesn't help anyone.

So we need to also fund that education factor around that.

Also, please give more funding to the Office of Civil Rights because when people are discriminated against and have complaints, they need to be able to have those investigated.

And right now, they're backlogged and they don't have enough people to do that.

So I would urge you to please give more money to the Office of Civil Rights and the great work that they do.

Councilmember O'Brien, I know you missed the meeting but I know you're a guy with a big heart and so I want you to please take some time to read these stories of people who are fighting for rent control like I am.

Most of you know me and you know that I'm passionate about this city and do all that I can to help this city and our residents and I and my family are someone that without rent control may no longer be able to live in this city soon.

So please fight for rent control.

What do we need?

Rent control.

When do we need it?

Now.

Thank you, Matt.

John Perkins, good to see you.

Del Patterson and then Peggy Hiltz.

Hello Council, again.

Two minutes starts now.

I'm going to mention six states, 1789, 1975, 2006, 2013, 2018, 2019. Here we go.

1789, the Constitution was drafted, they forgot a few things.

The citizens organized and added ten amendments so it was clear.

in the public document what the government intended for people's rights.

In 2075, the state passed a referendum through citizen initiative that raised lots of money, part of which came to the city to buy certain properties, which the city began to share ownership with, with non-profits.

1975, Wes Ullman, who's a model mayor, if any mayors are currently in office, would like a lesson on how to do this office, please consult his administration.

There was tremendous goodwill, particularly for the property I represent, which are mutually offsetting benefit property, which shares the work of the community organization in turn for a reasonable rent paid to the city.

The city being the landowner is responsible for initiating repairs and upkeep.

In the last five years, our organization, the Central Area Senior Center, has spent, of its own funds, $685,000, which, by practice, ought to have been from the city.

Mayor's administration said there's no reason not to give deed control to these properties that are part of mutual offsetting benefits.

2018, it was not in the budget from the mayor.

Thank you City Council with a resolution 31856 to put it in writing, make it clear so the public can follow the public business.

If it's not in writing, someone could say, we don't have to do it.

I'm not going to identify who.

2019, again, it's not in the mayor's budget.

Please put it in writing.

Take another resolution.

I don't know the language, but get it in writing so the public can follow the public business.

Done.

Thank you, John.

Del Patterson, Peggy Hotz, and James Lockhart.

So it's 61, 62, 63. So I don't see Dell.

Peggy, you're up.

Good evening.

My name is Peggy Hotz and I'm a Nicholsville founder and a volunteer.

I'm commenting today on the Mayor's Human Services Department proposed budget.

On page 182, there's an incremental budget change titled Residing Tiny House Villages.

At a time when there's a desperate need for more tiny house villages, this budget proposal includes a whopping $1,200,000-plus to shut down and remove two tiny house villages.

This is insane.

In fact, I almost wonder if it's a typo.

We oppose the closure of both the two villages threatened.

One is Nicholsville's tiny house village, Northlake.

Nicholsville-Northlake can continue running with Gift of Grace Lutheran Church as its religious sponsor.

This arrangement only requires the land, and the city won't have to pay Lehigh any operating costs.

The residents would be thrilled to get away from the harassment and intimidation they've suffered from HSD and Lehigh, and the city of Seattle would be saving money.

It's a win-win.

And yes, we need more tiny house villages, but HSD's promotion of one organization, Lehigh, to hold a monopoly over every tiny house village in the city is just not best practice, and you know it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Peggy.

Mr. Lockhart?

James, I don't go by Mr. or Sir.

Okay, 63, and then it looks like Richard Brodin, 64?

My name is James Lockhart, and I work with the organization called Drive Forward.

And I'm also going to say I'm going to speak for myself as well.

So the good things that I say is Drive Forward.

The bad things that I say, that'd be me.

First of all, the, what's that thought?

Taxes, let me back up.

Deactivation and hourly rate should be separate from the taxes.

when it comes to the TNC.

Those things should be separate.

They shouldn't be the same.

I've been doing ride share for three years now.

I believe that the ones who say they're not making an earning with this aren't doing it properly.

Last year, I grossed over $100,000, which is a record for me working for myself.

So the thing that I don't understand is I agree with the housing.

We need more housing.

I agree.

with the homelessness and all the transit and all that stuff.

What I don't agree with is why are we being taxed?

Why do we as rideshare people have to pay for it?

Because there's nothing there for us.

We put on the table a $27.50 base pay that would benefit drivers and bring benefits to the drivers directly, and it was tossed aside before anybody looked at it.

That is unfair.

I believe that the union is giving a lot of fake news, and fake news to me is a lie.

They're telling these drivers of these different communities stuff that they say they're going to do and can do, and they cannot do it for them.

I'm just asking to take a look at what drive forward committee put on the table, bring us to the table with housing transit and the union when you're talking about this budget.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Richard, number 64, Calvin Jones, 65 and Raymond Lee, 66.

64?

Yes.

If you're Richard, you're up.

Hi, my name is Richard Browder and I drive my car just for lift.

I'm a ride share driver.

I do pretty good, maybe not quite that good.

I've hit over 18,000 rides in the last four years.

And I've got to know a lot of people in the city.

The thing that I don't like about this tax is it almost feels punitive because we aren't part of the TNC organization people.

I don't think it's fair.

Today I had a young lady that I had to take home because the buses don't run really well in the middle of the day so she could take a nap between her three jobs so she can pay rent.

I think that the rent control would be well-deserved by these people.

I do like this job.

I like people.

More often than it used to be, I get a line ride where I go pick three people up and I take them to either the same or within a few blocks of each other.

I have a hybrid car.

I get over 50 miles to the gallon.

Half of the day I put 17 people to wherever they needed to go, a lot of them two or three at a time.

You can't tell me that one, I'm not leaving a smaller carbon footprint than other ways.

And two, I get to see people sometimes on these rides, share knowledge and become friends.

And a guarantee for driving for drivers, I think is really bad I drove cab many years ago, decades ago back home in Alaska.

Once you learn the town and apply yourself, you can make a pretty good living at this.

The people who complain about not making the money don't pay attention to the patterns in the town.

And or, in our system, if you get a rating of three stars or below, you'll never get paired with that person, rider or driver.

And some drivers won't get paired with their rides ever again because they're not rated well.

Thank you.

Calvin Jones, 65. Raymond Lee, 66. It looks like Hannah McCauley, 67. Do we have 65?

Nope.

66. Just raise your hand if you hear me call so we give you time to get up here.

67. 68. Johnny Mao.

Good.

Thank you.

And Johnny, after you is Josh Castle.

I know you're here.

And Hillary Coleman is 70.

Hey council members, my name is Johnny Fikru and I'm with Got Green and I'm rocking with Do You Criminalize Seattle?

Today we're here to reject the investments proposed with more policing, probation and surveillance.

This is not what makes our community safe.

You know, last Friday we saw thousands of folks at the climate strike and they were calling for a Green New Deal for Seattle.

Well, a Green New Deal is about transforming the extractive economy, the economy that thrives on pain and profit, into one that centers on regeneration and healing.

So with this logic, the city shouldn't be investing in more policing and surveillances with emphasis patrols.

Instead, these funds could be used to support real solutions to public safety, including things like free transit, so that the public can safely get to their homes, get to their hoods, get to wherever they need to be.

including affordable housing, where folks don't have to worry about displacement or evictions, where everyone has stability.

And I'm talking about good paying green jobs, where folks don't have to be working multiple jobs to keep a roof over their head.

We all deserve living wages.

And that's what public safety means in my community.

So let's stop financing harm and reinvest in an economy that serves the planet and our people.

If we're serious about decarbonizing in the city, then we gotta keep the same energy and also decarcerate these toxic systems that hurt community.

So let's invest in our futures and not the system that keeps failing our people.

Thank you.

Thank you, Johnny.

Josh?

Josh?

Do you have a group?

Are all four gonna speak?

Yeah, we're gonna speak as a group.

Is that okay?

Sure, you bet.

Great, thanks.

Good evening, everyone.

Nice to see you.

Actually, I'm gonna hand it over to Becca first.

Hi, I'm Becca Finkus, and I work for Lehigh with the tiny house team.

We are grateful to you and our partnership with the city for the funding and support of our eight tiny house villages in Seattle.

As you know, tiny house villages are the preferred shelter for people being swept by the navigation team and for people living in vehicles.

196 people died living on the streets last year, and we believe and hope that you do as well.

No one should die from homelessness.

These villages shelter close to a thousand people per year and have high rates of exits to long-term housing compared with other shelters.

They are cost-effective, especially compared to projects such as the retrofitting of the jail, Harborview Hall, and the Navigation Center.

City-owned, private, and faith-based land exists to accommodate more villages already.

This is especially cost effective given the thousands of volunteers and donors who help set up these villages and donate to build the houses, and they're ready to jump in and get started in doing it again.

We have dozens of tiny houses built and donated by skilled volunteers sitting in warehouses, garages, and driveways with no place to go.

We are requesting that the City Council support the allocation of $6 million from the sale proceeds of the South Lake Union Mega Block or other sources to support 10 new tiny house villages with 20 to 60 tiny houses in each village.

300 to 500 new tiny houses will shelter an additional 800 to 1,200 homeless men, women, children, and keep them safe in warm, heated tiny houses with hygiene and community facilities.

Five of the villages would be resident self-managed with a paid site coordinator similar to Enerbay, Georgetown, and Camp Second Chance.

Five villages would be operated on a home reduction model with 24-7 staff, including behavioral health specialists who can help people on their path to treatment and recovery.

All villages will have on-site housing navigators and case managers.

The code of conduct includes meeting with case management for housing, employment, and other services.

Tiny houses will be built by a combination of volunteers, vocational programs, students, pilot shelters, and other groups, companies, and individuals.

All villages will have a community advisory committee comprised of businesses, neighbors, and faith partners that represent the neighborhood around them.

My name is Naomi See, and I am a student at the University of Washington and a volunteer with Lehigh.

Georgetown Village is an example of an incredible village on city-owned land.

It is home to 60 people, including couples, families with kids, and people with pets.

The village is self-managed and democratically run by residents.

Lehigh provides operational and case management support, and referrals are made by the navigation team.

Two churches have already offered to sponsor and support the village.

Keeping it open will save $600,000 in cost instead of shutting it down, moving, relocating everyone to set up a new village, something that would be extremely disruptive for the people living there who came directly from homelessness to form a tight-knit community and strong bonds with neighbors, businesses, local faith organizations, and service providers.

The village is performing extremely well, with 39% of residents moving into permanent housing, compared to other shelter programs that range from 4% to 20%.

The Georgetown Village Community Advisory Committee, the residents, the Georgetown neighbors, have expressed strong support for the village to stay open.

And 71% of Georgetown neighbors surveyed support extending the permit.

From the village's engagement with the Georgetown community to their continued commitment to serve everyone who walks through their door, Georgetown Tiny House Village is a shining example of the community and people we should all aspire to be.

Please keep it open.

I'm Josh Castle with Lehigh.

I want to also please ask that you pass Council Member Sawant's legislation to authorize more tiny house villages in Seattle.

The public hearing is on October 17th.

I want to make sure everyone knows that.

We need the tiny house village ordinance to pass before the end of March 2020. when temporary permit extensions expire for the villages that are not FASE-sponsored.

Please also support more funding to help the many people and families forced to live in their vehicles.

In the one-night count this year, over 2,000 people and 19% of people who are homeless were living in their vehicles.

We are requesting the council to add 382,000 in funding to support more safe parking.

The University Heights Board recently voted to support safe parking, and I wanna thank Council Member Mosqueda and Pacheco for participating in the forum a few months ago to support that.

I'm gonna jump, because I only have a little bit of time left.

So Lehigh supports the real change campaign for 1.5 million in the budget to fund five mobile pit stops.

I want to thank all the council members for all your support of tiny house villages and for more affordable housing.

I especially want to thank my excellent council member in D5, Deborah Reyes, for all of her, all for support of these.

And thank you and have a good evening.

Thank you.

Thanks very much.

OK, 70 is Hillary Coleman.

Then we have Andrew Constantine at 71 and Merrill Cousin at 72. Hi.

Hi.

Good evening, council members.

My name is Hillary Coleman, and I'm here today as staff of the Seattle-King County Coalition on Homelessness.

We are grateful to Mayor Dworkin for including the required funds in her budget to adjust human services contracts to keep up with inflation, and we truly thank each and every one of you for your unanimous vote in passage of this legislation in July to take this important and necessary but not sufficient step to stabilize the vital work carried out by human services providers.

We support the full Seattle Human Services Coalition package and specifically urge you to take the next steps to close the wage gap for people who provide shelter, housing, skilled outreach, and guerrilla social work services by allocating $500,000 to carry out a robust comparable worth study analysis of benchmark jobs.

On a related note, as you take up legislation to establish a new regional governance entity on homelessness, please remember that similar formal commitments must be made to ensure stable, adequate funding for those who do this work, including the ability to pay competitive wages and benefits.

We want to continue to work upon the legislation that you as a city council passed.

We support the Mayor's proposal, proposed one-time capital investments to support the work of our member organizations and are also glad to see new resources that focus on the urgent need for additional skilled nursing staff and other supports for the increasingly ill, disabled, and elderly people experiencing homelessness.

We ask that you make additional investments in evidence-based programs such as LEED and supportive housing, and not to squander the precious public resources on so-called enhanced probation and other unproven approaches.

While all of this is important, we urge you to budget for additional investments in housing in the form of rental assistance, which we will be providing additional detail on to each of you shortly.

Thank you, and I have a copy of this for you all as well.

Great.

Thank you very much.

Andrew, 71, Merrill Cousins, 72, and Catherine Stanford at 73.

I'm next.

Please.

Hi, my name is Andrew Constantino, and I'm the on-site coordinator at Georgetown Tiny House Village.

I spend a lot of my day telling people no, Every day, unhoused people ask how they maybe get placed into a tiny house village.

For example, just today, totally true, a young woman trying to get custody of her children, asked me about a tiny house, disabled veteran who just lost housing, a man who has been camping on the street and just entered treatment for his addiction, a woman fleeing an abusive relationship, and a mother of four sleeping in her car tonight, all asked me how they could find a tiny house village.

These are people that I have to say no to.

because our village is full like all the tiny house villages.

What they have in common, what these people have in common is that they know that the tiny house villages are a safe place to be as they seek greater stability in their lives.

Let's keep the capacity we have and create more tiny house villages.

Help me say yes.

Thank you.

Patty, I'm I'm supposed to talk with Andrew.

I also am from the Georgetown Tiny House Village.

I'm sorry, I don't have your name here on this list.

That's OK.

I'll just leave my statement here for you.

OK.

If you want to finish the time that Andrew left, just go ahead.

OK, go ahead.

So I'm also from the Georgetown tiny house village, and after looking at the mayor's proposed budget for next year and seeing funds set aside for the relocation specifically of our village, I have come to the conclusion that it scares me.

It scares me what will happen to the 60 adults, one child, and 21 pets that are finally finding stability at our village.

It scares me to think about the vulnerable adults that may fall through the cracks, even with a concentrated effort and resources to placing our villagers into housing and other options.

It scares me to think about the traumatized people who I call my neighbors returning to the streets or the woods or sleeping in a doorway or being asked to go to a shelter where they don't feel safe.

It scares me to think of the lost relationships villagers gained with a case manager who they've grown to trust.

And it scares me to think that they'll lose the relationship with the Georgetown neighborhood, which has been wonderfully supportive of our village and invested in the success of our community.

It scares me to think of Seattle losing capacity for people to have a safe place to be.

And I think we should build upon the success of the tiny house villages and not lose what we have.

Thank you so much.

Meryl.

Meryl, then Catherine Stanford, 73, and Lynn Reed, 74.

Good evening members, my name is Meryl Cousin and I'm here to speak on behalf of the Coalition Ending Gender-Based Violence to say that we enthusiastically support the full portfolio of Seattle Human Services Coalition funding recommendations and particularly the comparative worth analysis to address the historic undervaluing of human services.

We really appreciate that the mayor included the Central Domestic Violence Helpline in her budget proposal and we urge you to approve that funding.

The helpline will provide immediate trauma-informed support, problem solving, safety planning, and individualized information to thousands of survivors in our region.

Many of these callers will not access any other kind of service, either because it's not safe for them to do that, they don't need or want it, or other existing service providers lack the capacity to serve them.

It also will provide a simple, straightforward path for survivors, first responders, medical and human service providers, and community members to get connected to the full range of services that are available in our community.

By approving this funding, you will allow Seattle to leverage King County levy funds to support a partnership that will benefit the entire community.

Finally, I wanna thank you all for unanimously passing the ordinance earlier this week, which relieves a tenant experiencing domestic or sexual violence from liability for damages done to a rental property by their abuser.

Financial hardship for survivors held liable for these damages, as you know, can cause a cascading chain of events that all too often lead to homelessness.

By passing this legislation, you've removed a significant barrier to survivors trying to escape and heal from abuse.

And even as importantly, you have sent a strong message that survivors are not responsible for their abuser's actions.

Thank you to Council Member Herbald for your leadership on this and to all of you for this really groundbreaking policy and making it a reality.

Thanks so much.

Catherine, Lynn Reed, and then Evelyn Chow.

Greetings, Council.

This is Catherine Stanford, and I'm with BOMA, the folks that own, manage, and then the support folks for the buildings, the office buildings downtown Seattle.

And I want to, first of all, thank you all for being here.

I've been where you are, and I know We should really appreciate them for their hard work.

We support the mayor's budget proposals regarding public safety.

That's really our focus right now.

We have growing concerns for the safety of our employees, our tenants, and people who provide the parking, the custodial, and the security services to our buildings.

We definitely support the navigation team and also believe having CSOs, downtown especially, I don't think they were allocated for downtown, but is really beneficial for us and a critical link to the police department.

We recognize that there's so much of what we're dealing with, our behavioral issues, and this is about getting help for the people that need it, and we support these programs.

I'm going to take my BOMA hat off for just a minute here and say that I've been a member of the downtown community for almost 30 years, 15 of which was at Pike Place Market where we provided many services for low-income, particularly seniors.

downtown and bathrooms that you can access as well.

And I just want to say that I don't think that we will be able to solve our challenges unless we face them together.

They are significant, particularly in the downtown area.

And by vilifying each other and not understanding each other, I just don't think we're going to get there.

And that does a true disservice to a great community downtown.

Thank you.

After Catherine, Lynn Reed.

Lynn, are you speaking with this group?

Good.

We have five minutes, please.

I'm number, yeah, it's number 73.

Oh, thank you.

Catherine is 73, so you're Lynn.

Oh, no, I'm, yeah, I'm 73. Well, that's odd, but go ahead.

Are you Lynn?

My name's Dante.

Go ahead, Dante.

Okay, thank you.

Sorry, guys.

Hold on for two minutes.

Hi, my name is Dante.

I'm a community member in Seattle, and I wanted to bring up a time when I was proud of the Seattle City Council, and that was the recent passage of the legislation to protect hotel workers.

And it was really cool to see you follow the lead of the people who know their conditions the most, which is the mostly immigrant women of color who organized the legislation that you all passed.

So I was proud of that.

And I want to bring up some things in the budget that I'm not proud of and that I don't want our city to fund.

And one of that is expanding the police and new money to hire police and incentive programs.

I don't think that should be a priority for us.

Yeah, the emphasis trainings included, that's in the 2020 budget.

A lot of us here are noticing that and including the SBD navigation teams, the teams that clear homeless encampments.

We don't want to see that.

And then just in general, defunding military and police presence.

Over the past five years, Seattle has spent $60,000 spending police to train with the Israeli military in a really dangerous exchange of tactics.

So things like that when there's people who need food and housing are not to be on our budget.

I'm asking you to fund instead things like rent control for the elderly for all, Green New Deal and Freedom School, safety, and I'm not talking about expanded police safety, I mean real safety, which is housing, food, secure jobs, legislation like the one you passed recently.

So thank you.

Thank you for coming, Dante.

All right.

Lynn and, Lynn, right?

Good evening, City Council.

Thank you for hearing us all tonight.

My name is Lynn Reed.

I'm with the Trade Association Group on Drive Forward Seattle.

Our membership consists of TNC drivers, for hire drivers, and taxi drivers.

We advocate and inform our members on how they can speak up for themselves with local and state legislation.

So here we have Mayor Jenny Durkan proposing an additional $0.51 tax on ride share trips in Seattle, pushing the total to $0.75 per pickup, making it the second highest rate in the nation.

Consequently, an increase of this nature would cause a drop in ride requests, lower driver earnings, negatively impact availability of rides in price-sensitive areas, and create a questionably accessible driver's resolution center.

The mayor is delaying the implementation of a minimum earning floor, the number one concern of drivers.

Clearly, Mayor Durkin isn't listening to us.

Of the proposed 51-cent increase, a mere 12 percent would be directed to driver protections.

The other 88% would provide a buffer in the mayor's coffers for ongoing city issues, none of which directly benefit drivers.

Much like the sweetened beverage tax, increases were passed to consumers and profits routed to the city's general fund with little accountability.

There is no reason to believe that this tax, this proposed tax would be any different.

The mayor is naive to think that these companies who are losing over a billion dollars a quarter would step forward and absorb this fee.

Historically, price increases result in consumers paying more and basic economics show when prices go up, demand goes down.

So with increased prices, drivers can expect to see demand for rideshare trips decrease.

Those who live in transportation deserts will be disproportionately affected, and there are some community members the mayor says will benefit most from the tax revenue, like for affordable housing.

Therefore, it's clear this is a regressive tax.

I agree the issues of transportation and affordable housing are important.

It just affirms this tax isn't in riders' or drivers' best interest.

Mayor Durkan said this increase will provide driver protections with the new driver resolution center.

While I support a driver resolution center, I'm concerned whether there will be equal opportunity access to that program.

Unfortunately, there is too much uncertainty on how this will benefit drivers.

And my main concern being any involvement of the Teamsters, who in the past have fought against everything TNC related, even going so far as to propose a citywide driver cap of 150 drivers at any one time, and unreasonable fare regulations.

Waiting for details of how this program will be implemented and administrated is unsettling considering the mayor staff took Most of their direction from the teamsters and not a true advocacy group driver advocacy group Like CBO, this legislation narrowly qualifies who can oversee the program and clearly is structured to share to shoe in a predetermined entity.

Most disappointing is the delay of a minimum earnings floor for drivers.

Drivers I have talked to said an earnings floor is their number one concern, but the mirror pushed out any decision for almost a year.

Drive Forward provided actual driver data supporting a fair minimum earning floor to the mayor, but she ignored it.

Drivers want to remain independent to make decisions in the best interest of their small businesses.

This tax proposal by the mayor seems disingenuous, with barely one-tenth of the revenue actually benefiting drivers.

In the future, I hope the mayor and her staff listen and consider what will actually help the drivers feel more secure in their profession.

Thank you.

I'm Virginia and I'm an Uber driver and I also represent Drive Forward.

I've been with Uber for three and a half years and in my little mind and my experience, The issue started with the Teamsters wanting rideshare companies to go, to become unionized.

And they were angry about, Teamsters and taxi drivers were angry about Uber and Lyft making money.

They were not treating their own customers fairly.

They were not doing the job that they had been so well compensated before.

There are horror stories from every rideshare rider.

above the age of, say, 20, 25?

I would have to ask you to come to an end.

Oh, sorry.

Just wrap up.

Finish your sentence.

Okay.

Got it.

The tax by Mayor Durkan is a Band-Aid for the Teamsters.

It has nothing to do with the quality of our lives or improvements, and the monies that are already in the budget have to be there.

There's so much revenue that the state and the city has that why put it on the drivers?

I'm going to have to ask you to stop.

Thank you.

Okay.

As a group, you had over five minutes now.

Got it.

Thank you.

Sir, I understand you had an emergency.

You were number 61, and please step up.

Yes, ma'am.

Thank you for considering that.

And it's Mr. Del Patterson.

First of all, I have two points to make.

I want to greet the council members here honorably and the constituents that are remaining.

The first one is the Uber taxation.

I think it's very unfair.

I testified before the council before and it's a thing about technology.

I don't think the mayor understands what Uber technologies is.

I am a social scientist of human geography from the University of Washington who has done research on this extensively and I've developed a term called innocently ignorant.

That means that's a nice way to say you don't know what uber technologies is.

The city needs to learn what uber technologies is.

Introducing myself as a Dell Patterson, but you guys know me as Minister Deputy Patterson, founder of Outreach Ministries USA, where I used to work with gangs since 1987 successfully.

My Uber profile here reads, I'm the Washington State Director for the NJOF.

You'll have to Google that to find out what it is, I'm a native of Conroe, Texas, grew up here in Seattle, 40 years in Seattle, have drove with Uber for three, nearly three years now.

And Uber provided independence, like drive forward, slogan is we're driving independence.

Never before have I been able to make as much money as I've made driving with Uber.

Uber just sold the company now.

And things are changing.

And I don't know, I can't tell you what the new technology will be, but we're learning it now.

And I urge the City Council, Mayor Jenny Durkan, to forget about the task.

We make minimum earnings, less than minimum earnings.

If it weren't for my tips, I couldn't survive.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for coming, and thank you for waiting.

All right.

So, we have Evelyn Chow, and I think it looks like you got a group going.

So, get the questions.

Good evening.

My name is Sue Kay.

I'm a 74-year-old Seattle native.

I'm here representing Decriminalize Seattle, the Chinatown International District Coalition, also known as Humbos Not Hotels.

I'm also a member of the Seattle Raging Grannies.

We're not going to sing to you tonight, although we have a perfect song called Police Have Perfect Vision, don't they?

Today I'm asking council members to reject the $3.6 million in funding for Seattle Police Department, which includes the proposed hiring incentive, community service officers, and retention and recruitment.

People have said already increased policing and surveillance doesn't make our communities safer.

Having hung around the CID, I know it also won't make our community cohesive and what we want for our cultural seniors.

I have been down there and I've witnessed the over-policing and police on steroids and it really bothers me.

I was in Hing Hay Park and there were eight police cars who came in at 50 miles per hour, converged on the park.

grabbed a very vulnerable person and used their tactics, which people have talked about here today.

It's frightening.

It's not what I want for our community.

And I also witnessed the police using 8th Avenue.

They come down Jackson, they turn left, and they must be heading to Soto.

There are sirens blaring at I don't know, 80 miles per hour.

And I'm just feeling that the SPD has had a reputation for being unaccountable for their police violence, harassing homeless, violating components of the 2012 consent decree.

And I say no more money until they comply.

I'm going to hand this over to others here.

Hi, I'm Annette Clapstein.

I'm also a member of the Seattle Raging Grannies and we are very much about having budgets that prioritize our vulnerable neighbors over the needs of predatory corporations and downtown developers who want to criminalize poverty.

It appears that our mayor wants to criminalize poverty.

We are absolutely opposed to that.

I am specifically asking the council to reject the portion of the mayor's budget that continues emphasis patrols by the Seattle Police Department.

We think there should be no funding for that.

Emphasis patrols use the highly contested and racist broken windows theory that signs of disorder and chaos in a neighborhood are a precursor to more crime and disorder.

The broken windows theory has been disproven even by the originator of the theory.

and shown to justify aggressive over-policing of poor neighborhoods.

This practice leads to more unnecessary misdemeanor arrests and justifies racist and classist stop-and-frisk policies.

In Seattle, these types of stops have been monitored since the 2012 consent decree.

Take note of that, 2012, and we are at 2019, and they are still not in compliance.

They are not only not in compliance, they are, actively fighting it and they should not be getting money while they are out of compliance with that decree.

The Seattle Police Department has been shown to have disproportionate stops of black individuals and with their abhorrent record of abusing people of color, the council should not fund the continuation of a practice that enables racist and anti-poor people policing practices to continue.

Over patrolling areas where houseless folks are sleeping and hanging out is inhumane, it's anti-poor people, it does not solve the larger crisis of houselessness facing Seattle and just traumatizes people further.

And I will hand it over to Evelyn now.

Hi, all.

My name is Evelyn.

I'm also here with Decriminalize Seattle, and I'm here today to call on our council members to reject the expansion of the enhanced probation initiative in the Seattle Municipal Courts.

Expanding probation expands surveillance inherently, and community members should not have to get arrested to get access to services.

Probation does not reduce recidivism and furthers racial and class disparities in the existing criminal legal system, and this proposal for expanded probation comes directly from right-wing anti-homeless groups like Safe Seattle, Speak Out Seattle, and the Business Lobby.

Our city cannot afford to cater to bigots who hate poor people and who believe that a tough-on-crime approach will create more safety.

Thank you.

We are like the youngest people here.

Some of us came straight from school.

Please listen to us.

Don't crush our future, seriously.

Do we have Joe Quintana here?

I don't see him.

Jason, 77. Name absolutely unreadable here, 78. Another unreadable name, but it looks like it's been scratched out, 79. Okay, please.

And tell me what your name is.

Thomas Emo.

Never would have gotten that.

Oh, for sure.

Thank you.

A tall one.

Oh, just a second here.

Did you end up signing at the bottom of this list?

So I just insulted your signature.

Thomas, I can read that as down below 79. Yes.

Thank you.

Wasn't in the wasn't in the specified area, so.

Okay.

No fault there.

Hello City Council, I'm Thomas Emo and I'm here to encourage each and every one of you to reject the 3.6 million dollars of additional funding towards the Police Department.

We need services, not surveillance.

Police officers are not social service workers.

We literally had social service workers come here and talk to y'all, along with many other community members who are taking democracy into their own hands and are doing the work.

What they need is money.

And what they need is more power to determine what they want to do with their own lives.

We don't need, I'm just gonna be honest, every additional dollar that goes to the police department funds death in installments.

We don't need more sweeps.

We need investment into communities, especially communities of color and low income communities.

We need more money going into the Georgetown tiny house village and we need to invest in the folks who are showing up and are doing the work day in and day out.

We need more support for social services, and we need to stop criminalizing people for just existing as they are.

We need to support them, and we need to ensure that We need to ensure that democracy is maintained, and we need to push for a Green New Deal.

And a part of that is demilitarizing.

A part of that is going to involve trying to unwind this violent system that we are being subjected to and honestly being terrorized by.

We need clean water.

We need food.

We need a functioning system that listens to the voices of the people, such as the people who took it upon themselves to speak to y'all.

I really encourage y'all not to invest more into policing.

Thank you.

So number 80 was Michael Wolfe, and I think he's left and crossed his name off.

81 is Ed Lambert.

Is Ed Lambert here?

Virginia Lee, 82. So it appears to me that there's a group, 83, 84, 84. Okay.

83, Annette?

I'm sorry?

Annette already spoke.

Okay, so.

We switched numbers.

I beg your pardon?

We switched numbers.

Annette went already.

Okay, and what's your name?

I'm sorry, what's your name?

Yeah, my name is Bona Abera.

My name is Bona Abera and I'm here as a concerned resident and taxpayer in Seattle.

I'm here because I care about the distribution of the budget because it is a key indicator of our values as a city.

I'm also here as one of the organizers who lobbied for the zero use of detention for youth resolution.

That resolution was passed as a message from the city council that y'all care about the over incarceration of primarily black, indigenous, and youth of color.

And I believe that how we treat our youth is a reflection of how we treat each other and care for our communities.

We know that the over-incarceration of black, indigenous, and people of color, as well as homeless communities, is a direct result of how anti-black racism and a commitment to punitive punishment, which does not address harm, is perpetuated through how we spend our money.

When I say our money, I mean us, the residents of Seattle.

The money of this budget belongs to us, and we demand that you reject the expansion of probation in Seattle Municipal Court, that you reject the continuation of the emphasis patrols by the Seattle Police Department, and that you reject the $3.6 million in funding for SPD, which includes the proposed hiring incentive, community service officers, and retention and recruitment.

We know that incarceration does not create safe communities for our youth or for adults.

Access to life-sustaining resources, healthy food, housing, and healthcare, such as the things that we're advocated for today, is where we should be spending our money, not in over-policing our communities.

I'm here because I have hope that the Seattle City Council is serious about a goal of zero use of detention for our youth and a real commitment to reducing harm and creating safe communities across our city and beyond by investing in the Green New Deal, Orca for All, Health One, non-coercive mental health counselors and social service providers, community grants for first responders programs, grants for emergency housing, and supports efforts for long-term affordable housing.

Reentry support for community members who are transitioning out of DOC and jails and the other things spoken about today such as freedom schools.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Does somebody have 84?

Hi, I'm Ganesha Gold Buffalo.

I would like to ask council to not only consider, but make an effort to put all of their energy into recognizing that we need to defund the police.

We need to reject all proposed funding toward an increased retention and hiring of SPD officers or CSOs.

We see through SPD's efforts to hire more black, indigenous, and people of color officers.

We know that the packages they offer to entice our community members will be attractive and hefty.

This entitlement tactic is flawed.

We know that police officers harass youth of color and homeless people disproportionately.

And whatever face it puts on, it serves to enforce the interests of the wealthy and the racist court system.

We resist these efforts to fragment and divide our communities.

Where we see increased funding go toward recruiting, hiring, and retaining police officers, we do not see in a similar commitment toward housing, social workers, teachers, and other services which ensure the safety, health, and well-being of our vulnerable population.

We agree wholeheartedly that non-armed, non-deputized individuals who are trauma-informed and well-trained in crisis intervention should be the first responders on our streets.

We do not believe that these individuals should even be associated with the police force.

We call on the funding for CSOs to go toward mental health counselors and crisis intervention specialists that are not part of the police department.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Do we have 85?

Thank you.

Do you have your card?

Yeah, but it's so messy.

I'm DJ Martinez.

OK.

Hi, everyone.

It's late.

We've all been here for a really long time.

I guess I just wanna say, I just wanna echo a lot of what I heard tonight.

We heard a lot from social workers and case managers who have come out of houselessness themselves and have gone above and beyond their job descriptions to help the people that they serve because they wanna help.

And it makes no sense that They're here asking for money to just be able to do their jobs.

There's places like the Daybreak Star and Chief Seattle Club that have been working tirelessly and have proven methods to combat the problems that the city is trying to solve.

So it makes no sense that they're here asking for more money when this budget is asking for millions of dollars to fund more policing and more surveillance for the city.

when we know that that historically hasn't worked.

You've seen us here for years.

I've seen you here for years hearing the cause for the same things and so this this budget does seem like a band-aid and it seems like to be bending under pressure from online Facebook groups, especially these hate groups that I know that you yourselves have been the targets of.

And so I hope that you will read this budget and hear everything that you've heard tonight and really, you know, consider what's going on here.

The times are changing.

It's an election year.

And so I hope that you will all want to leave a legacy that really is here for the people.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Do we have an 86?

87?

88?

How about 89?

Equally?

All right, so no 86, 87, 88, 89.

All right, moving to the 10th page, Cecilia, Or Cicely Bailey, number 90?

91?

Oh, that was Mr. Buffalo.

He's already spoken.

92?

Hi.

My name is Dan Tan.

I'm a resident of South Seattle and I'm a children's advocate at a shelter and transitional housing program for survivors of domestic violence.

I'm here to urge you to reject Seattle's expansion of the law enforcement in the name of reform and instead invest that money into rent control, affordable housing, more transitional housing programs, mental health programs, Indigenous Peoples Day, Green New Deal, and Orca for All, programs that actually ensure that the city is healthy, that the families and youth of the city succeed.

As a children's advocate working at a Shelter, I've seen how most transitional housing programs, especially confidential domestic violence programs have been eliminated due to funding.

So the truth is that this leads to shelter happening for a lot of families.

So you see kids starting from kindergarten, switching schools, homes every year or so depending on their stay at the shelter and transitional housing program.

And this is in your power to change.

There are proven success stories of home-to-school vouchers, for example, that the school will work with shelters and service providers to allocate Section 8 vouchers to families where they can stay inside their school areas so they have stable housing, stable school until graduation.

There was a case of this where A mother was telling me that she was sitting with her teen in their living room with this new permanent housing that they had.

And she said, we're going to stay here.

Like, this is our home now.

And he shook his head.

He said, I don't believe you.

Like, this isn't what has been happening the past couple of years.

Since kindergarten, actually.

So this is a success story, but it's still sad.

And then there's other stories where last week.

I'm going to have to ask you to wrap up.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, so I urge you to act in responsibility to your constituents and to instead of enable and act structural racism by funding law enforcement to be able to look into the eyes of families and youth and tell them that you've been accountable to them.

Thank you very much.

95 M.

Payne.

Do we have a 95?

And Dante's already spoken, that was 96. Oh, sorry.

Please.

Hi, my name is Ihwe.

I'm a youth community organizer, as stated earlier.

Yeah, seeing as we are the youngest people in the room, some of us, and we came straight from school and we are here like way after, way after than we should be to tell you that we have no interest in adding more money into the police budget.

I work with primarily youth of color with You Speak Seattle.

And like, I see my students losing hope the longer that they stay here.

In fact, if I recall correctly, during the November 2016 elections and we had protests, several of them were accosted by the Seattle Police Department when they tried to take part.

And while it is encouraging to see the climate strike and to see so many young people out there, a lot of black and brown youth of color are losing hope to keep living here because it's so fucking dangerous to live here.

Everyone I know has either been incarcerated, arrested, and they're all under, what, 18?

I've had to give them the talk as to what should happen if they get arrested, as to what should happen if their parents get arrested, or they're just out in the street, or just laughing in a supermarket.

the amount of policing that happens, especially with black men and black women or black students in general with like grocery stores started posting around the central district.

If you are a student with a backpack, we cannot allow you in more than groups of three.

Casual racism like that.

And I don't know what it's gonna take for you guys.

I don't know what words to say to you to make you take youth of color's lives seriously.

This is all I have.

Thank you.

All right, the last person on our list is the Honorable Michael B. Fuller.

Yes, I must continue in prayer.

Today's my birthday, I'm 63 years old.

Now, now, I have fought so many years to decrease homelessness.

And then this new city council at the time of September 11, 2001, 2,996 death, 2,977 victims, 345 firefighters death, and 19 hijackers death.

And then you state war on America, when it's a war on America, which finally George H.W. Bush, who served in the United States Navy during World War II, June 6 of 1944, and Robert Summer, United States Army, during World War II.

June 19. June 6 of 1944. And Johnny Fuller, who served in the United States, therefore, during both Korean War and Vietnam War.

And then you turn around here and violate your own oath of office.

That's RCW 2.04, part 080, your oath only.

Oath of Office RCW 2.24.020, the Oath RCW 2.48.210, the Oath Donation and RCW 9.8.

39A.36080, malicious harassment, and RCW 42.62020, meaningful activities incompatible with public duty, and RCW 49.63030, freedom from discrimination, and 59.18020, rights and remnant obligation imposed in good faith imposed.

9-28.500, pervasiveness and wrongdoing within corporation, Seattle City Council.

9-28.600, past history.

Thank you, Reverend.

The Honorable Mr. Fuller, thank you for joining us today.

Go ahead and cut it off.

Thank you and thank you all for staying to the end.

I appreciate you all.

Colleagues, thank you for being here.

This meeting is adjourned.